Retaining Walls
Most of the newer walls around St. Louis are segmental block. You see them in every subdivision in St. Charles and west St. Louis County. The block itself rarely fails. When one of those walls goes wrong, the cause is almost always something behind or under it: a thin base, geogrid that's too short, or backfill of the native silt instead of clean stone. Built properly, block handles the small seasonal movement of clay and settles in with the ground.
Drive through any subdivision built in St. Charles or west St. Louis County since the 1990s and you'll see segmental block. The units are made in a plant, so each course is the same size, and each one sets back slightly from the one below. Because the courses are dry-stacked rather than mortared, a block wall can take the small seasonal movement of loess and clay without cracking the way a rigid wall would.
That doesn't mean it won't fail. It means that when a block wall fails, the cause is almost never the block itself.
What we see in failed block walls around here: a leveling pad of a couple of inches of sand instead of compacted crushed stone, geogrid too short for the height, backfill of the native silt instead of clean stone, and a drain pipe that was capped or buried at the end so it never actually drained. We build ours with a compacted stone pad set below grade, geogrid layers at the spacing and length the height calls for, clean stone behind every course, fabric against the soil and an outlet you can see.
If an existing block wall is moving, we can usually reset it using the same block. For taller or heavily loaded walls we look at a full engineered build.
Block covers most back-yard terraces in Ballwin, Chesterfield and O'Fallon, replaces timber walls in Oakville, and handles out-of-sight walls on wooded lots in Wildwood and Arnold.
Typical timeline Several days for a typical residential run, including base work and backfill.
Work that usually goes with this one on a St. Louis job:
New walls to flatten a sloped yard, hold a patio or pool deck, or widen a driveway. Drainage and base priced with the wall.
Learn More →Walls that lean, crack, bulge or leak soil. We find the cause first, then price a reset or a rebuild.
Learn More →Wall drains, buried downspouts, swales and regrading. Often the real fix when a wall is only showing the symptom.
Learn More →Free, No Obligation
Tell us what the wall is doing and where it is. A side-on photo helps us figure out the problem before we arrive.