Concrete Retaining Walls in Port Orange, FL

Concrete retaining walls in Port Orange: poured, block and seat walls

A wall keeps soil from moving where the ground wants to go. You may have raised a patio, filled a low corner, cut a terrace by the house, or want a seat wall around a fire pit. Each one is a different job, and how to build it is the first decision. A poured wall is cast in forms with steel inside. A block wall, the kind a block layer stacks, goes up in block with steel and grout filling the hollow cells. A seat wall stays low, with a finished cap you can sit on.

The price range covers poured or block walls up to about 4 feet tall. Taller walls are engineered, and we price them to the design. Looking for retaining blocks or retaining wall contractors in Port Orange? The block comes with the wall. You get one estimate for block, steel, grout, drain stone and labor. A wall beside a patio ties to the patio page, and one along a driveway ties to the driveway page.

Permit and plans: what Port Orange asks for before a wall goes up

The city's Permitting Guide treats this as its own residential permit item, with signed and sealed plans plus a survey. An engineer or architect draws the plans, and we coordinate with theirs. The site-plan rule asks for more whenever a permit changes the lot. That means a certified survey, a site development plan (1 inch to 20 feet on lots up to an acre) showing proposed driveways, sidewalks and patios, and a grading plan with the finish elevations of floors, patios, driveways, street crown and lot corners. A raised patio changes those elevations, so the plan and the pour have to agree.

Don't lean on the HB 803 exemption for work under $7,500. Structural work is never covered, and the city counts freestanding masonry walls as structural. The exemption is also void on any lot partly or entirely in a flood hazard area. And if you start before the permit, the city's flyer says the application fee doubles. Think a low wall qualifies? Ask the Building Division through its exemption page, and read the Volusia permit guide for the order of steps. When the job needs a permit, we pull it.

Drainage behind the wall: flatwoods water and ridge sand

Water knocks walls over. The state soil map sampled 123 points inside the city and found 42.3 percent poorly drained ground and 17.1 percent very poorly drained. That's flatwoods sand (Myakka, Smyrna and Immokalee), where a seasonal high water table is normal. Another 16.3 percent is excessively drained ridge sand such as Paola and Astatula. Which one sits behind yours changes how long water stays in the backfill.

Daytona's normals run 51.25 inches of rain a year, with September, June, August and July the wettest months. All that rain soaks the soil behind a wall. So every wall we build to hold soil gets gravel behind it, filter fabric to keep sand out of the stone, and a perforated drain pipe that carries water past the end of the wall. We show you where that pipe empties before we dig, not on pour day.

Weather counts on pour day too. On hot or dry days, NRMCA's hot-weather rules say dampen the subgrade and forms, and curing runs 3 to 7 days. The Florida Geological Survey notes that poorly compacted fill can cause depressions that mimic sinkholes. So the base under the footing gets compacted before the steel goes in.

Trees, fill and the dripline: a wall near a live oak

Holding back fill brings trees into the job. The city's tree code sets protective barricades 3 to 4 feet high at the dripline or edge of construction, with no fill or materials inside them. Where more than 6 inches of fill goes into a dripline, the code requires a tree well. A live oak or bald cypress 36 inches across or larger is a historic tree, and only the city council can approve taking one out.

Remove a non-historic tree 6 inches across or larger without a permit and you pay twice the regular permit fee. Crossing an oak's dripline begins with a call to the city, and sometimes with a redesign: a seat wall stepped away from the trunk, a shorter run, or a raised bed that leaves the roots alone.

Before the excavator shows up, we lay out any line near a tree. The footing trench is where roots get cut, so we choose the line on the ground. Send photos of the tree with your request.

Riverfront and creek lots: Halifax River, Spruce Creek and Rose Bay

The city's water includes the Halifax River, Spruce Creek, Rose Bay, Crooks Creek and Sweetwater Creek. Does your yard run down to one of them? Then you have two questions, the one behind the house and the one at the water, and they are different permit items. The city's "What requires a building permit" flyer lists a sea wall as its own item, and the Permitting Guide lists a retaining wall as another. Ask which one yours is before anyone files.

For additions in a Special Flood Hazard Area, the city's permit guidelines ask for a FEMA Elevation Certificate, and a flood-zone lot loses the HB 803 exemption. About 28 percent of sampled points inside the city sit in Zone AE and about 29.5 percent in a Special Flood Hazard Area, so check the map for your lot. No Atlantic beachfront and no Coastal Construction Control Line sit inside Port Orange's boundary, so the state beach-dune permit isn't part of this job. The beachside guide explains those zones.

Parcels in Spruce Creek Estates average about 1.1 acres. On a lot that size, work out the drain outlet early for a long run. Spruce Creek Fly-In parcels are unincorporated, so a wall there permits with Volusia County, not the city.

Seat walls, planters and raised patios

A low wall is still a wall to the code. The city sets an at-grade patio 5 feet off the side and rear property lines, and its site plan has to show the patio's material, size and distance to the lot lines. A raised patio goes on that drawing. Does your seat count as a freestanding masonry wall? Ask the Building Division, because the city's HB 803 guidance counts those as structural, and the answer decides whether it files with plans.

Seats around fire pits, planters by the front walk and raised beds along a fence line are short jobs with a clean finish. A poured one takes a broom, smooth or stamped face. A block one takes stucco or a stone veneer. If it faces a patio, the cap sheds water. Face options are on the stamped concrete page.

Run the math on a 40 foot seat run 2 feet high. It has 80 sq ft of wall face, and at our $25 to $45 per sq ft range that comes to $2,000 to $3,600.

Wall jobs in Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach Shores, Ponce Inlet and Edgewater

Each town has its own rules. Daytona Beach wants applicants to bring a survey showing the existing structures and the FEMA flood zone, so a Daytona Beach retaining wall starts with that survey. Daytona Beach Shores names retaining wall installation as permit work; the Daytona Beach Shores page covers its beachside rules. Daytona Beach also has a Historic Preservation Board whose stated purpose includes regulating development in designated historic sites and districts. Ask the city whether your address is in one before you finalize plans.

Under Edgewater's stormwater and fill permit, lots under a quarter acre retain the first half inch of runoff and larger lots the first inch, with sodded retention areas on a site plan that includes driveways and sidewalks. Raising grade runs into that; see our Edgewater retaining wall page. Want retaining wall contractors in Ponce Inlet or Deltona? The pages for Ponce Inlet and Deltona cover each town.

What to send for a retaining wall estimate

• Photos of the slope or the low corner, with a tape or stake to show the height.
• How long the wall is, how tall you want it and what it holds back: a yard, a patio or a driveway.
• Your survey, which shows lot lines and any easements.
• Where the water goes today: a swale, a drain, a neighbor's fence or the street.
• Trees near the line, with locations and sizes, plus any HOA letter.

Send what you have, and we'll price your concrete retaining wall in Port Orange once we have seen the grade.