Landscape Design in Glen Carbon, IL

Around four feet is the usual trigger in Illinois, measured from the bottom of the base course rather than from the ground you see. Above that, and often below it on a steep or surcharged slope, you need an engineered design and a permit. We will tell you which side of that line your wall falls on before we quote it, not after.

Normally two levels rather than one. A patio at the walkout door, a second at the main-floor deck level, and proper stairs tying them together, so the lower space does not feel like a pit. The critical part is drainage: a walkout puts your foundation at the low point of the yard, so the grade and drain tile have to move water away before anything gets built on it.

If it is built right, yes. What holds a wall is what you cannot see: geogrid layers tied back into the hillside, clean drainage stone behind the blocks, and a perforated drain tile taking water out at the base. Walls fail here because someone backfilled with the clay they dug out, which holds water, freezes, and pushes the wall over.

Walls price by face area, not by length, so height drives the cost far more than people expect. Doubling the height roughly quadruples the work once you add engineering, geogrid, and the extra excavation. A modest garden wall is a few thousand. A structural wall holding a real grade change is a five-figure project.

Often, but be prepared for the honest answer. A wall that is bulging or tipping usually has no drainage and no geogrid behind it, and there is no way to add either without taking it apart. Rebuilding on the existing base is frequently cheaper than repairing twice. We will tell you which one you are looking at.

Retaining walls over the height threshold need one, and so does anything structural. We deal with the Village on that rather than handing you a form, and we call a JULIE locate before excavation. On sloped lots we also check for easements at the bottom of the property, which are easy to miss and expensive to build across.

Usually. Mature hardwoods are most of why people buy those lots, so we design around them rather than through them. That can mean a smaller footprint, hand-digging inside the root zone, or a floating build over the critical roots. Losing an oak to save two weeks of labour is a bad trade.