Reasons To Build a Retaining Wall If You Live on A Hill

Introduction

When you’re on a slope you have numerous options for beautifying your property. However, it’s also important to add a few functional features that can protect the soil and prevent it from eroding away. For that, you can search for “paving companies near me” and hire professionals to build a retaining wall for you. Let’s check out a few reasons to build a retaining wall if you live on a hill. 

The Details

1. Protect nearby structures – If your home is located at the base of a hill, there’s a risk of the soil sliding or collapsing down from the higher ground. When that happens, your home may be severely damaged without any protective measures. If you build a retaining wall, it can keep away that sliding soil or at least help mitigate damage in more severe scenarios. You’ll also get a lot of benefits if your home is located high up on the hill. 

If there’s a flood or other such incidents that make the soil suddenly slide away near your ground, it can cause severe structural problems for your home. The foundation may be weakened and cause the house to collapse. While it’s impossible to stop nature’s wrath, you can minimize risks by constructing a retaining wall. The retaining wall should hold off the soil and prevent it from simply breaking away. Apart from building a retaining wall, you can also plant trees to minimize those risks. 

2. Prevent erosion – When you live on a hill, your property resides in a sloped area. That means rain, wind, and other elements of nature have an easier time eroding away the soil. Runoff problems are quite common in sloped areas. With a retaining wall, you can level out the surface and straighten out that downward incline. Since the slope is minimized, the topsoil can’t be eroded away that easily. 
3. Resist gravity load – On a hill, you have to be very careful about vertical or gravity loads. It’s the pressure exerted by the ground perpendicular to your floor system. If the gravity load is being exerted by the ground at an unfavorable position, it can destabilize the structure of your home. One way of fixing gravity load is to balance it out with a retaining wall on the other end.
4. Control flooding – Heavy rains and storms can wreak havoc on the level ground and do a lot of property damage. However, things get worse on a slope. Heavy downpours can easily erode away topsoil and carry it along as runoff. In the best-case scenario, your plants lose a lot of nutritious topsoil to grow on. 

In the worst-case scenario, enough soil gets eroded away to sink the driveway, destabilize the foundation of your home or cause other such property damage. All of that can be prevented with a retaining wall. It can hold the soil in place and can also help you to manage floods. 

5. Reshape slopes – Sometimes the slopes around your property may not have the right angle to be accessible enough. Other times, you may find the slope to have a very odd look. You can fix those problems by building a retaining wall and modifying the slope according to your needs. 

For instance, if a slope is too steep, you can use retaining walls to shape it according to your needs and give it that perfect rounded curve and a smaller climbing angle. You can also give the slope the exact shape you want by constructing a retaining wall. You can even shift around the backfill and create contours elsewhere to add visual interest to your property. 

6. Divert and harvest rainwater – Retaining walls come in all sorts of innovative designs and some are made to divert and harvest rainwater. A brick retaining wall constructed the right way can prevent the rainwater from being drained away and redirect it to an underground rainwater harvesting tank or act as one. You can use that harvested rainwater later on for your turf, plants, garden, and more. That can save you a lot of money on your water bill.   
7. Beautification – As mentioned above, retaining walls can be amazing beautifying features of your property. Retaining walls on a sloped yard can be used to create custom landscapes. The walls act as centerpieces of your property and showcase gorgeous vertical flower gardens. If the contour variations on your property are large enough, you can build multiple retaining walls in a stepped manner and choose different themes for them.    
8. Minimize yard maintenance – When you construct a retaining wall, you shave away a portion of your yard. For most people, this is a boon since they can spend less time looking after the yard and making sure the turf stays green. You don’t have to worry about maintaining retaining walls since theta are made from highly durable materials and require little to no maintenance at all. Instead, you can look forward to spending more time with your loved ones and less time with the mower.       
9. Boosts property value – This benefit is probably the most underrated and less-talked-about benefit of retaining walls. A retaining wall is an asset to your property since it adds both aesthetic value and increases the security and stability of your home. That’s why they are a valuable feature for your home and can be used to upsell your home when you move to a different place. 

Moreover, retaining walls are considered detached structures of your property that get covered by your homeowner’s insurance policy in most cases. So, even if something bad happens, you can get it repaired within no time.    

Conclusion

Retaining walls provide a lot of benefits. They prevent damage to structures that are in close proximity, limit soil erosion, and can be a great help in managing floods. However, constructing one is complex and that’s why you need pros for the job. To hire professionals for building a retaining wall, you can search for “paving companies near me”.