Concrete retaining walls in Springfield IL - a wall built to drain and stay put

Most people call us when a bank keeps washing onto the lawn or patio after a hard rain, an old timber or block wall has started to lean, or they want flat ground where the yard falls away. At Allied Springfield Concrete Construction, we work in Springfield and the cities around it, and the price moves most with the wall's height and length, the ground and the room behind it, how the water will be drained, and extras such as tearing out an old wall or giving it a curved face. The schedule turns on how much digging room there is, the weather for the pour, the time the concrete needs to cure and, for a taller wall, an engineer's review. The estimate I write on site is where you'll see your own figure, so you know exactly what you're paying for before anything starts.

Water trapped behind a wall is what gives it trouble, so I plan the drainage before anything else, looking at where rain comes off the roof, across the yard and down the slope. I also measure the height the wall needs and the room behind it, and when a taller wall should have an engineer look at it, I'll tell you that plainly before we price it. Then our crew digs out, sets the forms and pours the footing with rebar, the steel bars that carry the pull concrete can't handle on its own, and pours the upright part of the wall on top. We give the concrete time to cure, gaining strength before any soil pushes against it, then put the drainage in, backfill in layers and clean up.

A wall usually goes in to make room for something. Once a slope is held back, the level ground near a pool is ready for concrete pool decks, and where the wall runs along a shed, workshop or lower level, we can follow it with concrete floor installation on the same prepared ground.

Winter decides a lot about a wall here. A cantilever wall needs a solid concrete footing below the depth the ground freezes each winter, so frost can't lift it, and older statewide readings show frost reaching deeper the farther north you go in Illinois. Those readings are dated and don't set a depth for your footing, but they're the reason we place every footing below the frost. Digging that deep takes room behind the wall, so when a wall has to sit close to an existing slope, the bank may need temporary shoring, bracing that holds the soil back while we work, and I'll tell you at the estimate if yours does.

Around Springfield we mostly see sloped back yards, driveways cut into a grade and older timber or block walls that have leaned, and we meet the same kinds of yards on jobs in Chatham and Decatur. When an old wall is in the way, we tear it out before we dig, so the new footing starts on firm ground.