Retaining walls are one of the best inventions in landscaping. They're not a new feature, but they are so helpful in turning a hilly, unstable area into a neat, usable space. They're a common feature in many regions, but they also have the reputation – at least among those who've never constructed one – as being relatively straightforward to create.
This is true to an extent; short retaining walls in good soil can sometimes be a DIY project. But taller walls in problematic soil, or walls that need to offer support to people walking on them, are better done professionally and not as a DIY project. When you look at what really goes into constructing retaining walls, especially rows of them in terraces, you may realise that hiring a crew to complete the work is the better choice.
Drainage: Without It, You'll Just Have More Problems
When you create a retaining wall, you're not just cutting into a hill and adding concrete or rock. You need to ensure the soil held up by the wall has good drainage and that the wall extends far enough down into the soil to be stable as rain saturates everything behind it. You'll need to choose and design the drainage pathways that will be most effective in letting excess water flow away from the wall. If you don't know how to add drainage to a series of retaining walls, you stand a good chance of forgetting something, no matter how many DIY sources you reference. Let landscape contractors create the walls so you can be more confident in the walls' ability to stand up to the next strong storm that passes through.
Fun With Soil Preparation: Rocks and Instability
You need to add drainage and stabilise the walls. That means digging, and in many yards, the soil is rocky, unstable, of poor quality or simply so uneven that you need to remove a lot of it to even get started. Soil preparation can include replacing all the soil, adding more soil, removing large rocks you find under the topsoil, digging trenches and those drainage pathways, amending the soil behind the wall if you plan to have a garden there and regrading land beyond the retaining wall. It's a lot of work, and that's all before constructing the actual wall and before you plant anything in the soil held up by the wall.
Australian Standards: They Exist, and They're Serious
Depending on the size and type of wall you want to build, you may have to follow strict federal and state requirements. These are meant to ensure the wall is properly engineered, and that they can apply to short walls. But for the first-time DIYer, they can be difficult to follow (or even find). That's yet another advantage to hiring a contractor for this work. They already know what needs to be done and what standards it needs to meet.
When the retaining wall is finished, you'll have a yard that has more usable space and that looks tidy. Get bids from contractors now so that you can get that work started as soon as possible. Reach out to a retaining walls contractor near you to learn morel
