Concrete retaining walls in Fargo ND - a wall built to drain and stand up to frost

Most calls start with a slope that keeps washing out, a bank crowding the yard or an old wall that's started to lean. The price moves with the wall's height and length, how much drainage the ground behind it needs, what the soil is like and whether something heavy like a concrete driveway will sit near the top. The schedule turns on whether the city needs a permit, on the weather, and on curing, which is the wait while the concrete gains strength before we backfill so it's hard before the soil leans on it. Your own figure comes from the estimate, where I put the scope in writing.

We don't price a wall off its height. I look at the drainage behind it, the ground it'll stand on and anything planned nearby, like a driveway, then build the quote on a design that fits your yard, because the footing, the steel, how deep it goes and the drainage should come from that design or the code that applies. Once the design's set, our crew digs out and forms the footing, the wide base the wall stands on, and sets the rebar, the steel bars inside that hold the concrete together against the soil's push. We pour the footing and the wall, let the concrete cure, then put in the drainage and backfill behind it and shape the ground so surface water runs away from the wall instead of soaking in behind it.

A wall often goes in as part of bigger yard work. If the new level ground is for a pool, we can pour the concrete pool deck once the wall's in, and if the cut makes room for a shop or storage building, our concrete floor installation covers the slab inside it.

In parts of Fargo the first question is where the wall and its fill are allowed to go. The city, the state and the federal government all set rules for building in areas mapped as floodplain, and those rules cover structures and earthen fill, so the wall and the dirt behind it both count. The city asks you to apply for floodplain development permission, and the state requires a floodplain development permit from the local Floodplain Administrator before any work starts in a Special Flood Hazard Area, the high-risk flood zone on the maps. We check that with the city before we dig, because it can change where the wall goes and how much fill we bring in.

The other thing we plan for is frost. Frost heave, ice forming in the soil and lifting it, is more likely where the water table is high and the ground is clay or silt instead of gravel that drains, and that's the heavy clay we dig into across Fargo and on jobs in West Fargo and Moorhead. Recent wall designs put sand or gravel behind the wall because fill that drains fast helps keep water and frost pressure from bending or breaking it, so the backfill is something we settle in the design, not on the day.