Retaining walls & terraces · Grade Creek & High Lonesome · Since 2001
The hill is an argument you can win.
Batterstone engineers the walls that make slopes into ground you can use — segmental systems drawn to the geogrid schedule, boulder banks set by machine and eye, and drainage sized to the storm the county designs for rather than the one you remember. Engineered where the county asks, stamped where it insists, and terraced so the garden gets level beds instead of a cliff.
A leaning wall is a calendar, not a surprise — if it moved this winter, the next wet spring moves it further · free assessment · (555) 786-4415 · walls@batterstone.example
Segmental wall — to 4 ft
from $165per sq ft of face
- SRW block, three colourways
- Buried course on compacted base
- Drainage aggregate & pipe to daylight
- Cap units pinned, not glued
The garden-terrace workhorse.
Engineered wall — 4 to 10 ft
from $240per sq ft, engineered
- Stamped drawings & county permit
- Geogrid to the schedule, every layer
- Designed surcharge for driveways
- Cored drain with cleanouts
Where the wall holds more than dirt.
Boulder bank — any height
from $95per sq ft of face
- Machine-set granite to 4 t
- No concrete, no frost heave to fight
- Planted pockets in the joints
- The wall that reads as landscape
The naturalistic answer to a cut slope.
How the build goes
A wall is a drainage plan wearing stone
Ninety per cent of failed walls failed behind the face — water with nowhere to go. The order of operations is the engineering, and it never changes regardless of the system you choose.
Cut & bench
The slope is benched, not scalped — each lift of the wall sits on undisturbed ground stepped into the hill, because a wall resting on fill is a wall resting on a rumour.
Base & drain
Compacted aggregate base under the buried course, and the drain pipe laid to daylight behind the wall from the first course up. The stone you see is the costume; this is the plot.
Units & geogrid
Block or boulder set to line and batter, geogrid rolled to the stamped schedule between lifts and locked into the backfill — the grid is the reason a ten-foot wall of blocks stands at all.
Backfill & cap
Free-draining stone to within a foot of grade, topped with soil the plantings will actually live in, cap units pinned, and the daylight end of the drain photographed working before we leave.
Terraces the garden can actually use
A slope is either a view or a lawn, never both — until it is staircased. We cut the terraces to bed widths the plantings want, wide enough for a wheelbarrow to turn, and the walls become the seats, the beds and the edges of the garden instead of its problem.
The boulder bank
Where the cut slope meets the road allowance, a boulder bank does what mortared stone cannot: it flexes with the frost, drains between its own joints, and reads as landscape rather than infrastructure. Set by machine and by eye, planted in the pockets, and standing decades after the concrete around it has cracked.
I reviewed the geogrid schedule against the stamped drawings and found the two agreed — which in my line of work is a noteworthy event. The drain ran to daylight and worked on the day they showed me, in a dry August, because they hosed it to prove it. Wall’s plumb, four winters on.
The garden went from a mudslide to five level beds and a bench we eat breakfast on. They benched the slope instead of shaving it, so nothing has moved since — and the walls are the seats, which I did not expect to be the part I love most.
Our wall was leaning a year ago March and two bids wanted to glue block caps on it. Batterstone pulled it, found the original drain was never run to daylight, and rebuilt the whole thing with the pipe photographed working. It has since taken the wettest spring I can remember without a shimmy.
They handled the permit, the stamped drawings and the inspector, and our only job was choosing the block colour. The driveway sits where the hill used to slide, and the invoice matched the quote to the dollar.
Before you pour anything
The wall questions
What everybody with a slope in Grade Creek eventually asks — answered with drains, grids and permits rather than adjectives.
Does my wall need engineering?
Over four feet of exposed face, holding a surcharge like a driveway, or sitting above a property line — any one of those and the county wants stamped drawings, and we produce them in-house with our engineer rather than leaving you to find one. Under those thresholds the block schedule does the engineering, but the drainage gets built to the same standard regardless.
Why did my wall start leaning after twenty good years?
Almost always water. The drain silts, the aggregate behind the face clogs, and one wet spring the wall becomes the drainage path — hydrostatic pressure pushes where the stone cannot flex. Caught early it is a drain rebuild, not a rebuild of the wall; that is why the assessment is free and why we photograph the drain working before we leave either way.
Block, boulder or poured concrete — which lasts?
Block with geogrid to schedule, and boulder banks, both flex with the frost and drain between their own joints — decades with maintenance measured in hours. Poured concrete is rigid, cracks at the cold joint, and fights every frost cycle in the county. We build the first two and will tell you honestly when the third is the wrong answer we decline to sell.
Can the wall be terraced into the garden instead?
Usually, and it is the better garden for it: two four-foot walls with a level bed between them hold the same hill as one eight-foot wall, cost less to permit, and give you ground you can plant, mow and sit on. The terrace is the answer to most slopes; the single tall wall is usually somebody insisting on a lawn they will never use.
The assessment is free, and the answer is honest.
We measure the lean, read the drainage and tell you whether the wall needs rebuilding, re-draining, or nothing at all — including the year you can expect the nothing to end. The written assessment is yours whoever builds.
Batterstone Retaining Co. · Lic. #MR-1902 · engineered drawings stamped in-house · walls@batterstone.example · 3 Bench Road, Grade Creek