Concrete Retaining Walls in Arlington, TX and the DFW Metroplex

A poured wall is one solid piece of reinforced concrete, formed and poured on a footing. It handles the most soil pressure per inch of thickness, it takes a clean smooth or board-formed finish, and it is the right call for taller walls, walls that hold up a driveway or a slab, and anything an engineer has to sign off on.

A CMU block wall is built from concrete masonry units on the same kind of footing, with vertical rebar dropped through the cells and the cells grouted solid. It costs less for short walls, it goes up faster on a tight lot where a form crew and a pump truck are hard to stage, and it can be stuccoed or faced with stone. For a 2 to 4 foot garden wall or a terrace, block is usually the better value.

Either way the footing, the steel and the drainage are built the same way. The wall you see is the part that matters least.

Soil by itself pushes on a wall. Wet soil pushes much harder, and saturated DFW clay swells on top of that. A retaining wall with no way to shed water is holding back a hillside plus a column of water, and that is the load that tips walls over or cracks them through the middle.

Behind every wall we build there is a column of clean gravel, not dirt, at least a foot wide against the back face. At the bottom of that gravel sits a perforated drain pipe wrapped in filter fabric, sloped to daylight or to a drain so the water leaves. The fabric keeps fines from silting the gravel and plugging the pipe. Weep holes through the wall face give the water a second way out if the pipe is ever overwhelmed.

We also waterproof the back of the wall and grade the top of the backfill so surface water runs away from it, not into it. Skip any one of these and the wall will be fine the first dry summer and in trouble the first wet spring.

The clay under Arlington, Mansfield and most of Tarrant County is expansive. It swells when it gets wet and shrinks when it dries, and it moves the most in the top couple of feet where the moisture changes season to season. A wall sitting on that zone moves with it.

We dig the footing below the active zone, wide enough to resist overturning, and we key the wall into it with steel so the wall and footing act as one piece. Footing size is set by wall height and what is behind it. On taller or surcharged walls the engineer sets it and we build to the drawings.

Backfill gets compacted in lifts, not dumped in one pass, and we keep heavy equipment off the fresh backfill until the wall has cured. The same ground movement is the reason most concrete cracks in North Texas, and a wall is just a slab standing on its edge.

Arlington builds to the International Residential Code, which exempts retaining walls up to 4 feet tall, measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall, as long as the wall is not holding a surcharge. That measurement is the one people miss. A wall that shows 3 feet above grade with an 18 inch footing under it is a 4.5 foot wall to the inspector.

A surcharge is any extra load on the soil behind the wall: a driveway, a parking pad, a pool, a fence with a solid panel, a building, or another wall terraced above it. A surcharged wall needs a permit at any height. Arlington's own building code goes a step further: any wall over 4 feet of developed height, and any wall with a building, driveway or other permanent construction closer to it than one and a half times its height, has to be designed by a professional engineer. So over 4 feet, or with a surcharge, plan on a permit and drawings sealed by a Texas licensed engineer. We work with engineers who do this regularly and we build exactly what they draw.

Permit rules change, and two things apply no matter the height: Arlington's building code lists retaining walls among the improvements that cannot go in a drainage, utility or right-of-way easement without an easement use agreement from the City (or the easement holder's written permission on a private easement), and your lot's setbacks still hold. Confirm with the City of Arlington One Start Development Center, 101 W. Abram St, 817-459-6502, before you dig. Our permit FAQ covers how the process works.

Retaining walls are priced per linear foot and the height drives almost everything, because a taller wall needs a bigger footing, more steel, more gravel and more excavation, not just more concrete. As a general market guide for DFW, a CMU block wall up to 4 feet runs from the mid $20s to about $60 per linear foot installed, and a poured concrete wall from about $30 to $60 per linear foot. Walls over 4 feet, engineered walls and walls with a surcharge commonly run $60 to $150 or more per linear foot once the engineering, permit and heavier footing are in.

Tear-out of an old wall, hauling off spoils, a stone or stucco face, and difficult access all add to that. Our job minimum is $1,800, which covers mobilization, forms and a short-load pour on a small wall. Tell us the length, the height you need to hold, and what sits behind it, and we will give you a real number.

If a railing or a fence goes on top of the wall, we set it up for that from the start. We pour the wall with sleeves or embeds, and CJM Metals, our sister shop, builds and installs the steel on it. One family, two trades, one standard.