Plan First, Build Last

If a contractor is in a position to landscape a site that will eventually include someone’s home, and a retaining wall is the last thing that gets attention, there’s a good chance a terrible mistake is being made.

“It should fit into the schedule at the very beginning of the site development,” says Suzanne Blackburn, vice president, Hilfiker Retaining Walls, Eureka, Calif. “The wall will dictate the available landmass, and the wall might allow you to access certain parts of the site that you didn’t know you’d be able to access.”

She offers the hypothetical example of a development where a builder constructs a house near sloping ground that affects the backyard. It has been designed in such a way that the homeowner ends up with a sloping backyard that might extend to something like a creek or stream. “Had they thought about retaining walls before they built the home, it would have been easier to build a retaining wall with steps down to that creek, putting the retaining wall in before the house is there,” Blackburn explains. “After the house is there it’s going to be a pain to get equipment back there, do the excavation and bring the fill in.”

For reasons like this, Andy White, president, Wayside Landscape Services, Inc., Ashville, N.C., advises contractors against quoting prices over the phone. “It’s very dangerous,” he says. “You have to go to the site and find out if the roadways in and out will support the equipment. What are you going to have to tear up? Can you get delivery of material?  If you know you’re going to need a retention system on a new home site, for instance, build it before the house.  Not after, when you have to do $10,000 worth of damage to the site.”

White explains that this kind of labor is one of the major factors employed when calculating price. “On one site you may get to unload your materials right where the wall will be, but on other sites you may have to hand carry everything from 100 yards and certainly, that plays a role in the cost.”

The author is a staff writer for Lawn & Landscape magazine and GIE Media and can be reached at wnepper@gie.net.