Concrete retaining walls in Mobile AL - a wall that holds your slope and drains well

A poured concrete retaining wall in Mobile usually costs about $30 to $35 per square foot of wall face, installed with labor. Wall face is the front of the wall, its length times its height. That usual price leaves out tearing out an old wall, stamped or multi-colored concrete, curved walls, brick, walls taller than 3 feet and challenging soil, so any of those push it up. Your written estimate shows what's in yours.

Often you do, because the city's Engineering Permitting Department generally requires a land disturbance permit when a job exposes bare soil or brings in fill, and digging out for a wall and backfilling behind it can do both. Some small residential jobs are exempt, and the city offers a Single Family Residential Affidavit for single family projects disturbing less than 4,000 square feet, with other limits in its application. On a project that needs the permit, the city decides on its own whether a professional engineer has to draw the plans. We check with the office that covers your address and handle the paperwork when a permit's needed, and exemption questions go straight to that department.

Water and poor planning cause most failures. One engineering review of failed walls traced a large majority to poor communication among the people on the project and to water nobody managed, whether groundwater seeping in, rain running off the surface or leaking water and sewer lines. That's why I talk through where your water goes before we price any concrete.

Keep plants, trash and animals away from them, and make sure the soil behind the wall drains, because those are what plug them. Weep holes are the small openings near the bottom that let trapped water out, and engineering research finds they help in theory but often get cancelled out by clogging from the wrong backfill, plants, wildlife or trash.

On a home job that costs more than $10,000 with labor and materials, the work can fall under Alabama's Home Builders Licensure Board. The board's definition covers building or improving a residential structure above that amount, unless the work is outside its jurisdiction, so ask anyone bidding your wall whether it applies. The same law lets you do this kind of work yourself on your own home or property.

Mobile doesn't allow fill in VE zones, the coastal high-hazard areas on the flood map, and allows it in other flood hazard areas only with a No-Rise certification from a licensed Alabama professional engineer. If your wall means bringing in fill, your lot's zone can decide whether it works as planned. Look up your flood zone before you call, and we'll check it with the city before any digging.