Retaining Wall Repair and Replacement
If your wall is leaning, bulging, cracking or rotting, it is telling you something about what is happening behind it. Walls rarely fail because of the blocks or the rock. They fail because water has nowhere to go, the base was never right, or the wood has run out of time.
Free site visit, usually within the week · $5M insured · WCB covered · Building since 2013
We repair and replace retaining walls across Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Mission, Langley, Agassiz and Hope. Some walls can be saved. Some need to come out. We will tell you honestly which one you have.
What the Damage Is Telling You
- Leaning outward at the top. Usually water pressure behind the wall with no drainage path, or missing reinforcement into the slope.
- Bulging in the middle. Backfill was never compacted properly, or the wall is carrying more load than it was built for.
- Blocks separating at the joints. The base has settled unevenly, often because it was built on soft ground.
- Soft, dark, spongy timber. Rot. Once it starts, it does not stop.
- Soil washing out around it. A grading and drainage problem as much as a wall problem.
Replacing a Timber Wall
A large share of the replacement work we do is tearing out old wood walls. The Fraser Valley is hard on timber. Constant rain, ground contact and freeze and thaw cycles mean a treated wood wall starts giving up somewhere around the fifteen year mark, and often sooner.
We do not build new wood walls. When we take one out, it gets replaced with rock, block or formed concrete, and the drainage gets fixed at the same time, because the original wall usually did not have any.
Repair or Replace
Repair
Makes sense when the wall material is still sound and the problem is behind it. A block or rock wall that moved because water built up can often be taken apart, given proper drainage and a corrected base, and rebuilt.
Replace
Makes sense when the material itself has failed, the wall was built too tall for its design, or it is carrying a load it was never meant to carry. Rotting timber is almost always a replacement.
Either way
Rebuilding without fixing the drainage just resets the clock on the same failure. That is the part most people were never told the first time.
What It Costs
Small repairs start around $2,500. Full replacements land in the same range as new wall construction, usually $25,000 to $80,000, because taking the old wall out and dealing with the ground behind it is part of the job.
Removal and disposal, how much soil has moved, whether a machine can reach the wall, and whether the replacement needs an engineer all move the number. Anything over four feet needs a permit and engineering, and we handle both.
Common Questions
My wall is leaning. How urgent is it?
It depends on what is above and below it. A leaning garden wall is not an emergency. A leaning wall holding up a driveway, a structure or ground people walk on is worth looking at soon. Send us a photo and we will tell you which you are in.
Can you just straighten it?
Not usually, and not in a way that lasts. A wall that has moved has moved because of conditions behind it. Pushing it back without addressing drainage and base means it moves again.
Do you replace walls somebody else built?
Most of them were. We are not interested in running down another contractor, we are interested in what the ground is doing and what it takes to fix it properly.
