Concrete retaining walls in Hayward CA - a wall that holds back the slope and drains

Most people who call us have a slope dropping dirt onto a walkway, an old wall that's started to lean, or a hillside they'd like to flatten for a concrete patio. The price mostly turns on the wall's length and height, how deep the footing goes, how much digging and hauling it takes, how the water behind it will drain and whether the city wants an engineered design. The schedule depends more on that design and the permit than on the pour itself, plus the time the concrete needs to harden before we backfill against it. After I've seen your site, I write up an estimate so you can see what you'd be paying for.

Water building up behind a wall is what worries me most, so we plan the drainage before anything else, starting with where the water on your lot comes from and where it can go. When a wall calls for an engineer's design, we build to that design. Then we dig out for the footing, the wide base at the bottom that keeps the wall from tipping, set the forms and tie in the rebar, the steel bars inside that hold the concrete together when the ground pushes on it. We pour the footing and the wall, lay the drain and backfill behind it the way the drainage plan calls for, and give the concrete time to cure, the wait while it hardens and gains strength, before the full weight of the soil goes against it.

Holding back a slope often turns a hill into ground you can use. Some customers put a concrete pool deck on the flat area a wall creates, and others want a slab for a shed or workshop, which is our concrete floor installation work. We plan the wall and what goes next to it together, so the water from one doesn't end up behind the other.

In Hayward, the city requires a building permit before construction on every retaining wall except one that's no more than 4 feet tall, carries no surcharge, the extra load of ground or anything else pushing down from above it, and holds back no flammable or combustible liquids. A wall that needs a permit has to start with a design certified by a registered design professional, usually an engineer, because the city won't take the application without it. Whether your wall falls under the permit comes down to its height and what's behind it, so I sort that out at the visit, and when it needs one, we build to the certified design. You can read the city's retaining wall rules yourself.

We see a lot of hillside backyards and driveways cut into slopes, here and on jobs in Castro Valley and Union City. Some grading needs its own grading permit from the city on any site, so we check that alongside the wall. The state has also released earthquake fault zones that affect Hayward and Alameda County, and they're still preliminary and out for public review.