Retaining wall construction in Clovis CA - a wall that holds your yard and drains

Most folks call us when a slope keeps sliding toward the house, an old wall has started to lean, or they want to level off part of the yard for a patio. The price mostly moves with the wall's height and length, the material, how much drainage it needs, whether soft ground under the base has to be dug out and replaced, and whether an old wall comes out first. The schedule turns on the same things, plus how much digging there is and whether a taller wall needs an engineer's look before we start. We're based in Clovis and work in the cities around it, from Madera down to Kingsburg and Reedley, and I'll give you a figure for your own wall when I come out for the estimate.

Water behind the wall is the thing I worry about most, so drainage goes into the plan before anything else, starting with how your yard slopes and where the runoff ends up. When the job starts, our crew pulls the plants and roots out of the dig area, since that material rots and settles if it's left in, then digs down to firm ground and swaps out anything soft for compacted gravel so the base doesn't sink. We set the first course dead level, because every course above it follows that line, then build the wall up with clean gravel behind it so water has a way out, packing the backfill in layers as we go. Last, we cap the wall, shape the soil so surface water runs away from it, and clean up before we leave.

A new wall often sits next to older masonry, and if there's a brick or stone wall on the property worth keeping, masonry restoration can bring it back so the old and new work look right together. And when the wall frees up a flat spot for a patio, that's usually where people start picturing a fire feature, so we do fireplace installation too.

California's contractor licensing board describes a concrete contractor as one who forms, pours, places, finishes and installs concrete work. So if a poured concrete wall is on the table for your Clovis yard, ask whoever's pouring it about their license before you sign anything, and at the estimate we'll go over whether block or poured makes more sense for your slope.

A lot of the walls we're called about around Clovis are old timber walls that have started to lean, or backyards where the ground steps down toward the house and dirt washes onto the patio after a good watering. We see the same thing on jobs in Madera and Kingsburg, and the fix starts the same way, by working out where the water goes before we pick the wall.