Retaining Walls

Create Useable Land For Your Design

In some cases, a retaining wall is required to level the area if you have a sloping yard.  Creating level terraces using walls has been done for centuries.  Making a useable landscape design is far easier when working with a flat surface.  Even a minor slope can limit your design options – but a minor slope would only require a small retaining wall.  Many customers are unaware of grading issues when it comes to landscape design.  One of the biggest advantages of meeting with our designer in-home is that we can identify potential grading problems and show you how to spot them.  

Incorporate Features

Retaining walls can be designed so the home-owner can install a flower bed that holds back soil and mulch.  Retaining walls offer a great solution to separate adjoining areas like entrances and driveways.  Retaining walls are a great design choice that defines boundaries, add style and provide amazing extra seating that your guests will love when visiting your newly renovated yard.

Combat Erosion & Manage Water

Eroding soil can destroy a landscape design.  By decreasing the slope of the property, using a physical structure and by installing proper drainage erosion can be prevented.  A&Z Interlock can provide valuable experience when it comes to advising and constructing home-owners when retaining walls are necessary. 

A&Z Interlock customers can rest assured knowing that we take care of any necessary permits and applications before starting a project.  Any retaining wall above 1.2 metres (3.9 feet) require a permit be obtained.  Our work is inspected by a civil engineer who certifies the safety of the wall. In landscape designs that have terraces, a permit is not required as long as the distance between each level is twice as long as the height. 

Our construction crew outlines the area where your retaining wall is going to be built.  Depending on the size of your wall, we excavate a depth of anywhere from 6 to 12 inches.  We fill the excavated area with crushed stone and compact it to the desired compression.  This gives us an even foundation to build on top of. 

Now that we have a solid foundation we can start building.  We place each stone individually and are continually checking if the wall is level.  A small problem with uneven layers only gets worse as the wall grows.  We choose stones that fit in an aesthetic way kind of like how one would match tiles when laying an indoor floor. 

Coping is the decorative finishing layer of bricks that goes on the top of your retaining wall.  to save money and to increase structure, interior bricks are designed differently since they won’t ever be seen. The caps of the retaining wall add style and match the rest of your landscape design. 

Depending on the size, an inspection of the wall is scheduled to ensure it is structurally sound and safe.  Once completed we can install other elements like decorative borders, adjacent interlock patio, sod, or gardens.

Retaining Walls We Built In Ottawa

Most client designs focus is on knee walls for gardens and raised terraces to work with grading issues.  We do have some very interesting and impressive walls build from armour stone.