Retaining Wall Contractor in Spokane Valley, WA: Poured Concrete & Block Walls

Poured concrete and block retaining walls in Spokane Valley, built with the footings and drainage that keep them standing through freeze-thaw winters. Raven Buildings excavates, forms, pours and backfills retaining walls for sloped yards, driveway cuts, patios and shop pads across Spokane Valley, from Greenacres and Veradale to the Ponderosa area and the hillsides south of the river.

Retaining walls we build in Spokane Valley

• Poured concrete walls: reinforced cast-in-place walls for driveway cuts, shop pads and taller grade changes
• Block walls: segmental block walls for yards, garden terraces and patio edges
• The work around the wall: excavation, drain rock, perforated drain pipe, and the driveway, patio or slab on top, poured by our own crew
• Walls tied to a bigger job: leveling a pad for a shop, pole building or metal building before we build it

Do you need a permit for a retaining wall in Spokane Valley?

Spokane Valley builds under the International Residential Code that Washington adopts statewide, so the starting point is the code's 4-foot rule:

• Exempt from a building permit: a wall 4 feet or less, measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall, that doesn't support a surcharge
• What a surcharge is: extra load on or behind the wall, like a driveway or parking pad, a walkway, a building's footing or a slope that keeps rising behind it. A wall with a surcharge needs a permit whatever its height
• Measure from the footing: a wall that shows 3 feet above grade can easily be over 4 feet once the buried footing is counted

Spokane Valley also regulates earthwork on its own. Its land disturbance checklist lists "building a wall less than 4 feet high" as exempt from a land disturbance permit, but the City's code (SVMC 24.50.030) calls for an engineered grading permit for work such as:

• Large grading: more than 500 cubic yards
• Steep cuts or fills: slopes of 2:1 or steeper that are more than 2½ feet high
• Grading that supports structures: including retaining walls, paving and permanent buildings

If your wall comes with a lot of cut or fill, we check it against the City's rules before any digging starts. Our retaining wall permit guide compares Spokane Valley with the City of Spokane and the County.

When a wall has to be engineered

IRC Section R404.4 requires a retaining wall to be designed to accepted engineering practice when it isn't braced at the top and holds back more than 48 inches of unbalanced fill, or when it's over 24 inches tall and carries loads beyond the soil. That design checks overturning, sliding, soil pressure under the footing and water uplift, with a 1.5 safety factor against sliding and overturning. When your wall crosses those lines, we tell you up front and build it to the engineer's design.

Built for Spokane Valley freeze-thaw

NOAA's 1991–2020 normals for nearby Spokane International Airport show about 132 nights a year at or below freezing. Water trapped behind a wall freezes, pushes on it and softens the soil under its base, so every wall we build gets:

• Free-draining backfill of clean gravel or crushed rock
• A perforated drain pipe at the base with a real outlet
• Filter fabric between native soil and the drain rock
• Weep holes or drain board on poured concrete walls

Footing depth is set by the wall's design and the local frost rules, which we confirm with the City for each job.

What a Spokane Valley retaining wall costs

Every wall is priced from its height, length, material, access and whether it needs engineering, so we quote each one after a site visit rather than publishing a per-square-foot number. Request a free quote with your address and a photo of the slope, and we'll come look.

Why Spokane Valley owners call Raven

• One contractor for the wall and the concrete: we pour the driveways, patios and slabs that often sit on top of a wall, including in neighboring Liberty Lake
• Buildings, too: if the wall is for a shop pad, see our Spokane Valley metal building page
• Local: we also build walls across the city, see our Spokane retaining wall page and our guide to block, poured and boulder walls

Get a Spokane Valley retaining wall quote

Call 509-350-2016 or request a free quote. Tell us the wall's rough height and length, what's above it, and your address.

Sources

• WAC 51-51-003, Washington's adoption of the International Residential Code
• 2021 International Residential Code, Chapter 1 (Section R105.2, work exempt from permit)
• ICC Significant Changes, IRC Section R404.4 Retaining Walls
• City of Spokane Valley, Land Disturbance Permit Checklist
• Spokane Valley Municipal Code Chapter 24.50, Land Disturbing Activities
• City of Spokane Valley, Permit Center
• NOAA NCEI, 1991–2020 Monthly Normals, Spokane International Airport