Concrete retaining walls in Pembroke Pines FL - a wall built to drain and hold the slope

Most people call us when dirt washes out after the afternoon storms, when a slope is creeping toward a slab, or when an old wall has started to lean. The price mostly moves with how tall and how long the wall is, whether it's poured concrete or block, how it's finished and how much digging and drainage it needs. The schedule turns on permit and HOA approval and on the days the concrete needs to cure, or harden, before soil can go back against it. When I come out, I walk the job with you and explain what's in the price, so you see where your own number comes from.

With a wall it's the water behind it that does the damage, so I spend most of the estimate visit on drainage, where your gutters empty and where your sprinklers point. Then our crew digs out and packs the ground under the footing, the wide concrete base the wall stands on, because a footing on loose dirt settles and takes the wall with it. We set the forms and tie in rebar, the steel bars inside the concrete that help it carry the push of the soil without cracking apart. After the pour we let the wall cure before any soil goes back against it, since loading a green wall early is how cracks start. The drainage goes in as we backfill, built in from the start and not added on later, so water behind the wall has somewhere to go.

A wall is often one piece of a bigger change to the yard. If it levels ground near your pool, we can pour the concrete pool deck on the flat space you gain, and if it holds up a pad for a shed, workshop or room, we handle the concrete floor installation too, so the wall and the slab are planned to drain together.

Before we dig for a wall in Pembroke Pines, we sort out the permit. The city's Building Department issues permits for most construction and improvement work, even a fence, and its list of work that doesn't need one names jobs like painting and flooring, not retaining walls, so it's not something to assume either way. If it's unclear for your wall, I check with the city's building office before anything starts, and when a permit is needed we take care of the application and the paperwork the city asks for, including the HOA awareness affidavit it wants with every submittal, whether or not you live in an HOA. The city's Engineering Division also requires engineering permits for construction on private property and easements, and it names digging, fill and drainage lines, which is most of what goes into a wall, so we check that at the same time.

We're based in Pembroke Pines and work across the cities around it in Broward and Miami-Dade. On jobs here and in Miramar and Davie, the walls we're asked about are usually short ones along a tight side yard or holding up a raised patio, often with sprinklers soaking the soil right behind them, so we talk through re-aiming those before the wall goes in.