Retaining Walls in Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix is flat at its center but ringed by grade, and that is where retaining walls do their work. Ahwatukee climbs the slope against South Mountain, Moon Valley and North Mountain sit against the Phoenix Mountains Preserve, and hillside view lots across the city meet the house on a cut that has to be held. The desert makes those grades harder than they look. Caliche, the cement-hard calcium layer under our soil, sheds water instead of absorbing it, so when a monsoon dumps an inch of rain in an hour, it runs downhill fast and scours any unsupported slope.

Retaining walls do structural work: terracing a sloped backyard into flat, usable levels, holding a raised pad or planting bed, and stabilizing the cut where a hillside lot meets the foundation. The same wall system also builds the features that make a yard livable. Low seat walls wrap a fire pit or ring a patio to add seating without furniture, and planter walls frame raised beds for the xeriscape and desert planting that thrive in Phoenix. Because we self-perform the surrounding hardscape, a wall ties straight into a paver patio, an outdoor kitchen or turf instead of looking tacked on.

Every wall starts below grade. We excavate to a compacted footing, set the first course dead level because every course above depends on it, and build up in concrete block sized to the height and load the wall carries. Behind the wall we place drainage gravel and a perforated drain or weep outlets, so the monsoon water that collects behind the soil has somewhere to go instead of building the hydrostatic pressure that bows or cracks a wall over time. Missing drainage, not bad block, is why most walls fail in the Valley.

Height and location drive the paperwork. In the city of Phoenix, retaining walls over three feet, and effectively any wall on a hillside lot, require a permit and often engineering, and many communities add an HOA review of wall height, color and materials. We build to meet code and your community's standards, bring in engineering where the height calls for it, and prepare the submittal. Taller walls and hillside terracing get reinforcement built in. Finished to match your pavers or stone, a Solterra block wall in Phoenix holds its line for decades with almost no upkeep. We have built them across the metro since 2012 under ROC 359628.