Retaining Walls In Weaverville, NC

Why Weaverville slopes need retaining walls

Weaverville sits about 9 miles north of downtown Asheville, along the Dry Ridge. Reems Creek runs through town beside Lake Louise Park, and the land falls away toward it. Interstate 26 runs along the western edge of town. That mix of ridge, creek valley and highway means a lot of lots are anything but flat.

On ground like that, a builder or homeowner usually has two choices. Grade the slope back at a gentle angle and give up yard, or cut it steeper and hold it with a wall. On a tight homesite the wall often wins, because it gives back the flat ground the lot does not have.

Walls beside long drives and new pads

The drives out here can be long, and a drive that climbs a hillside leaves a cut on the uphill side. A low block wall along that cut keeps the bank out of the ditch and the ditch out of the gravel. Where a building pad is cut into a slope, a wall can hold the high side so the house is not sitting at the toe of a raw bank.

Because the same crew does the digging, the pad and the drive, the wall is planned with them. That avoids the common problem of a wall built to the wrong height because the yard grade was set later.

Drainage is the part you do not see

Red clay holds water. When it is soaked, it pushes hard on anything in front of it. A wall with no way to let that water out is a wall waiting to lean. Every wall we build has drain pipe at the base, clean stone behind the blocks and fabric between the stone and the soil.

The pipe is run to daylight or to a ditch, not left to dump water at the bottom of the wall. Read more in retaining wall drainage explained.

Permits in and around Weaverville

Weaverville is an incorporated town with its own planning department, and the town planner processes zoning permits. If your lot is inside town limits, call the planning department before a wall goes in. Outside town limits, Buncombe County is the office to ask. Taller walls, and walls that hold up a house or a road, can need an engineered design. Ben will tell you at the estimate if yours looks like one of them.