Austin Retaining Walls

Most retaining walls are built for commercial or industrial use to hold back large land masses. Homeowners, however, can find retaining walls useful for the same practical purposes, as well as for aesthetic ones. Of course, if you've started looking into retaining walls, chances are you already know a little bit about their function. For Austin homeowners, retaining wall design requires both a designer's eye and an engineer's know-how. If you don't feel ready to talk to an Austin retaining wall builder just yet, these considerations may help you determine if installing a retaining wall is right for your home.

Austin Retaining Walls, Landscaping, and Design
Retaining walls have their practical purpose, holding back large land masses and stemming the occurrence of soil erosion, but the real value to homeowners lies in the possibilities for landscaping. Austin isn't known as an especially hilly city, but virtually no place is flat. Some properties are more severely sloped than others, especially in the aptly named Hill Country, and these homes may find particular use of a residential retaining wall.

Many homeowners look at a sloping lawn and see it as a disadvantage. Installing a retaining wall can turn this disadvantage into a beautiful asset for your home. Digging into this slope and putting in a retaining wall can make for a beautifully framed area, which you can use for a garden, pond and waterfall, or other beautiful landscaping. A semicircular wall can also be used for even better aesthetics, while the top of your wall can be staggered and used for convenient steps connecting two different grades of your yard. Other configurations and designs can be used for different applications. In short, the possibilities are nearly endless.

Austin Retaining Wall Installation
Retaining walls, in general, are not a DIY project. Anything more than a small, dry-stone retaining wall requires professional expertise. Brick and stone walls that make use of mortar or concrete should be installed by a masonry or concrete contractor to create a quality, structurally sound wall. Plus, poorly planned retaining walls can have wide-ranging consequences that can affect yard drainage and soil stability. Your retaining wall may look innocent enough, but you're basically building a small dam, and you'd be surprised by the problems that can arise from a carelessly placed wall.

Consequently, retaining walls of any size also generally require a building permit, and should be designed by a professional and licensed contractor. In most areas, four-foot walls are the cut off for retaining walls that do not require a permit, but you should double check with your local municipality. This may seem like a headache at the time, but it's better than your neighbor dragging you into small claims court because your retaining wall is diverting excess water into his lawn.

Cost of Installing a Retaining Wall in Austin, TX
There's no one way to build a retaining wall, and no one way to estimate the cost of your project, until you discuss the specifics with your Austin contractor. At ServiceMagic, we compile data from all the project requests we process. From this data, we can tell you that the national average for retaining wall installation is right at $5,000. To give you some idea of just how wide ranging the cost might be, it's not at all uncommon to see walls built for as little as $1,000 or more than $10,000. The size and design of your wall may play a large part in determining where your project will fall into this range, but so will the construction technique that's used. Poured concrete and traditional masonry are the most popular.