Retaining wall construction in Midland TX - a wall that holds the yard in place

Most people call when a flower bed keeps washing onto the patio, a slope is too steep to mow or an old wall has started to lean. The price moves mostly with the material you pick, then with how tall and long the wall runs and how hard the spot is to dig and reach. The schedule turns on whether the city wants a permit for your wall and on getting underground lines marked before we dig. Your estimate comes in writing with what's included spelled out, so you can hold it up against anyone else's line by line.

I start by walking the yard and looking at the slope, how tall the wall needs to be and where your sprinklers hit, because a wall in the wrong place gives up no matter how nice the block is. Once we've settled on the wall type and the spot, our crew digs the trench, packs a gravel base so the first row sits on something firm and sets that first course level, since every row above it follows its lead. We build up from there with drainage gravel behind the wall so water has somewhere to go besides pushing on it, backfill and tamp in layers, and haul off the dirt we dug out before we leave.

A retaining wall is rarely the only masonry on a lot. If you've got an older garden wall or planter that's tired but still sound, masonry restoration can usually save it, and I'll tell you when that's enough instead of selling you a new wall. Once a wall gives you a flat patch of yard, plenty of people want a fire on it, and that's where our fireplace installation work comes in.

The City of Midland requires residential building permits for new construction, additions, remodeling, repairs and detached accessory buildings, and that list doesn't name retaining walls, so whether yours needs one isn't settled until you ask the city's building permits office. Only the property owner or the owner's licensed and bonded contractor can get a permit, so ask early who'll apply for it. When a job calls for one, we handle the paperwork with the right city or county office and wait for it before we start, because the city says work begins only after the permit is issued. Work also has to start within 180 days, and if it stops completely for more than 180 days the permit expires and you'd have to apply again, so we schedule the dig once the permit is in hand.

Most walls we build around Midland hold up a raised bed or a drop where a back yard steps down to an alley or the neighbor's lot, and most of them sit right where the sprinklers spray. We plan the drainage behind the wall around that water, and we see the same kind of yards on jobs in Odessa, Big Spring, West Odessa and other cities around Midland.