Sultan sits on the Sultan River, on the way up the highway toward the trails and the passes. Yards step with the terrain. Water comes off the higher ground, crosses a lawn, and heads for the river or the ditch. Foothill lots fail at the bank, not at the flower bed. The wall has to be heavy, drained, and founded on something that is not fill from the last slide.
Snohomish County · ZIP 98294 · 2020 population 5,458
The wall is holding the road cut
We dig to competent ground. Setting a wall on the soft stuff that already moved is how you build the next failure. Rock and engineered block both work when the base and the drain are right. The drain daylights to the side, not into the face where it stains and freezes.
Access for boulders is a real constraint on a narrow drive. If we cannot get the stone in, we do not promise stone. Block can be the honest material.
The ground in Sultan
The useful projects are the ones that make a sloped lot walkable: a gravel path that stays put, a rock wall where the bank is cutting, a drain at the top of the slope so the patio is not the creek. Forest edge is close. Alders and maples lean in, and after a wind the cleanup is limbs, not a few leaves on a patio.
Lawns exist on the benches. They need seed that can take shade at the tree line and a soil that is often thin. We do not promise a golf-course surface against the timber. Native mountain plants hold the cuts better than a bark bed that just slides downhill in January. Access for machines is usually fine along the highway side and tight once you are in the trees. We look at that before we promise a wall.
How we do the work
A retaining wall is a structure. The part you see is the block, the boulder, or the timber. The part that keeps it standing is the base, the batter or the geogrid, and the drain rock behind it. We do not stack block on the sod and call it a wall.
Height decides everything. A low garden wall and a wall holding a drive are not the same detail, the same permit, or the same price. We measure the retained dirt, not the face you wish it were.
What we look at first
- Retained height, at the tallest point
- What is above the wall: a lawn, a drive, a house
- Water coming down the slope
- Access for block or for boulders
Block, rock, or timber
Engineered block is predictable and what we use when the height or the permit wants an engineered system. Boulders fit the foothills and the older yards. Timber is a short-life choice in the wet, and we will say how many years you are buying.
Drainage is part of the wall
Rock behind the face, a pipe at the heel, and an outlet you can see. Weep holes alone, stuffed with the native clay, are not a drain. This is the step that gets skipped on walls that lean.
What changes the price
Height, length, access, how much soil we have to move, and whether the wall holds a car or a flower bed. We measure those. A per-foot number shouted from the sidewalk ignores the tallest bay, which is the bay that costs the money.
More from this crew
- Retaining walls across Snohomish County
- Rock walls in Sultan
- French drain installation in Sultan
- Hardscaping in Sultan
- Patio installation in Sultan
- Retaining walls in Monroe
- Retaining walls in Gold Bar
- Retaining walls in Index
Sources for the climate and the water
- USDA plant hardiness map for choosing plants that can take a Snohomish County winter.
- EPA WaterSense on watering less once a lawn or a new planting is established.
- EPA Soak Up the Rain on keeping roof and yard water from becoming someone else’s problem.
