Retaining Walls, Steps & Walkways: what to know
Connecticut is rocky, hilly, and full of retaining walls, dry-laid fieldstone along old property lines, mortared stone terraces, segmental block, and stone steps cut into slopes. A large proportion of them are moving, and almost always for the same reason.
Walls fail because of water, not weight
Saturated soil is far heavier than dry soil and behaves more like a fluid. Add frost: water in the backfill freezes, expands and pushes the wall outward a little each cycle. It never pushes back. Over a decade of New England winters a wall built without drainage walks steadily downhill.
What a proper wall costs its money on
Most of the budget goes into things you will never see:
- A compacted gravel base below frost depth.
- Free-draining crushed stone backfill instead of the native clay that came out of the hole.
- Filter fabric so silt does not clog the stone.
- A perforated drain pipe at the base, daylighting somewhere sensible.
- Weep holes through a mortared wall; batter and geogrid reinforcement on a dry-laid or segmental wall.
If a quote does not name the base depth, the backfill material, the drain and the reinforcement, those things are missing from the wall as well as from the paperwork.
Permits
Connecticut permitting is handled town by town. Many towns require a permit plus an engineered design above a threshold height, commonly around four feet. Check with your local building department rather than assuming, and expect the contractor to pull the permit.