Retaining Walls in Metairie

Retaining walls earn their keep in Metairie

Metairie is flat, so people assume retaining walls are a hill-country thing. They’re not. Out here walls do quiet, important work: holding up a raised planting bed, building grade away from the house for drainage, terracing a low spot so it stops collecting water, edging a patio or driveway that sits above the lawn. On soft lakefront fill with a high water table, a low wall that controls where water goes is often the difference between a dry yard and a swampy one.

The real enemy here is water, not height

Most Metairie walls aren’t tall, so the load that breaks them isn’t the height of the soil. It’s water. Our summer storms saturate the ground fast, and saturated soil pushes on a wall with enormous force. A wall built without drainage traps that water behind it, the pressure builds, and the wall bows, leans, or fails. We build every retaining wall around drainage first: clean crushed-stone backfill, a perforated drain pipe at the base that carries water to daylight, and filter fabric so the soft fill can’t migrate in and clog the system. The wall stays dry behind the face, so the pressure never gets a chance to build.

• Free-draining crushed-stone backfill behind the full wall face
• Perforated drain pipe at the footing routed to a clear outlet
• Filter fabric separating clean stone from native fill
• Compacted leveling base sized for soft, settling ground

Built for fill that settles

The reclaimed fill under Metairie doesn’t sit still, and a retaining wall on a poorly built base will lean as the ground beneath it shifts. We over-excavate the base trench, compact a deep aggregate leveling pad, and set the first course dead level, because every course above only stays true if that bottom row is right. Segmental block walls suit this ground because they’re flexible. The units interlock and can tolerate minor movement without the catastrophic cracking you’d see from a rigid poured wall on the same fill.

Engineered when the job calls for it

Low garden and edging walls are straightforward. Once a wall gets taller or holds back a real load, it needs proper engineering: geogrid soil reinforcement tied back into the retained earth, a batter that leans the wall into the slope, and a base sized for the conditions. We build to that standard when the height demands it rather than stacking block and hoping. Taller or load-bearing walls in Metairie also fall under Jefferson Parish review, so we pull the permit through the Jefferson Parish Department of Inspection and Code Enforcement and build to what they require.

Walls that do more than hold soil

A retaining wall is a chance to shape the yard, not just prop it up. We use them to carve out level terraces on a sloping back lot, build raised beds that lift plantings out of soggy ground, create seat walls that double as patio seating, and define clean edges between the lawn and a paver patio or driveway. Matched to your hardscape, a wall reads as part of the design instead of a utility fix.

What you can count on

A retaining wall that drains, that’s set on a base built for Metairie’s soft ground, and that stays plumb through every wet Jefferson Parish summer. We’d rather spend the time on drainage and the base than come back to fix a leaning wall in three years, and that’s the wall you get.