Concrete retaining walls in Garden Grove CA - a wall that drains and stays put

A poured concrete retaining wall up to 3 feet tall in Garden Grove usually costs about $52 to $57 per square foot, going by what the local market charges. That typical price covers digging, site prep, building the forms, the pour, a basic finish and cleanup. It leaves out tearing out an old wall, stamped or multi-colored concrete, curved walls, taller walls and hard soil, so any of those puts a job outside that range. At the estimate I measure your wall and write up exactly what's in it.

The best type is the one whose weight and steel suit your wall's height and ground, and with poured concrete, the two we talk through most are gravity walls and cantilever walls. A gravity wall holds the soil back with its own weight and has little or no steel, while a cantilever wall is reinforced concrete on a footing that the soil itself holds down. If your wall runs along the edge of your lot, a cantilever wall can be built with its footing on one side only so it doesn't cross the property line, and I'll tell you at the estimate whether that suits your site.

Poor drainage is by far the most common reason a retaining wall performs badly, and if nobody deals with it, those problems can lead to outright failure. Weep holes, the small openings through the wall face, often clog with the wrong backfill, roots, critters or trash. Design guidance for walls says openings at the face alone don't keep the soil behind fully drained, and it points to pipe, gravel or crushed rock instead. That's why it's worth asking any bidder what goes behind the wall and how those drains will stay clear.

You apply through the City of Garden Grove, which takes new permit applications on its Development Access Website. Whether your particular wall needs a permit is the city's call, so I'll tell you what I know at the estimate and check with their office when I'm not sure. If it does need one, we pull it and handle the inspections.

Type your address into the state's EQ Zapp tool on a computer or phone, and it shows whether the property sits in a mapped earthquake hazard zone. Inside one of those zones, the state has found that weak soil or rock is likely underneath. That ground can fail in an earthquake and damage structures unless the right precautions are taken during grading and construction. Run the check before you plan a wall, and if your yard is in a zone, I'll tell you when I think the job needs a check with the city or an engineer.

A new wall can still get small cracks as the concrete dries and shrinks, so the aim is to decide where they go and keep them from growing. We place control joints, straight grooves that give the wall a planned line to crack along, and we let it cure before any soil goes against it. Most old walls I see cracked badly because water was trapped behind them or the footing was too shallow, and those are the two things we spend the most time on.