Landscape construction · Pittsburgh & the South Hills
Grading, retaining walls and drainage on steep and difficult sites across Allegheny County — engineered, permitted, and built by one crew.
The part nobody photographs
Every contractor shows you a finished patio. Almost none of them show you the hole it came out of — which is the part you are actually paying for. Drag the handle.
Week 1
Week 11
Upper St. Clair. Nine feet of fall across forty, a spring nobody had mapped, and a garage taking water every year. Two-tier segmental wall, French drain to daylight, terrace on top. The drainage is the job; the paving is the part you see.
Not our words
Two firms quoted the wall and neither mentioned drainage. Ridgeline opened with it and the number was higher because of it. Three winters on there is not a crack in it and the garage is dry for the first time since we bought the house.
They pulled the permit, dealt with the township and sent us the stamped drawing before anyone dug. I have built a house and never had a contractor make that part this painless.
Access was a nightmare — no gate wide enough for a machine. They hand-carried block down a hillside for two days rather than tell us it could not be done. Came in four days over and on the original number.
What we do
We do not mow, we do not plough and we do not take maintenance contracts. If it holds ground up or moves water away, it is ours.
Recent work
Every one of these was a slope before we started. The photographs are taken at least two winters after handover, because a wall that looks good in October tells you nothing.
How it runs
We read the slope, the soil and where the water already goes. Ninety minutes on your property, free, and you get an honest answer on whether it needs engineering.
Anything over four feet gets a design stamped by a professional engineer. We prepare the packet and file it with the township ourselves.
Cut, compacted base, drainage stone, pipe to daylight, block, geogrid, backfill. The half you never see is the half that decides whether it stands.
Final grade, topsoil and planting — then we run water through the drainage with you standing there before the machines leave.
A wall does not fail because of the block.
It fails because of the water.
Why us and not the cheaper number
Pipe, stone and outfall are line one of the estimate. When a quote comes in twenty thousand under ours, this is almost always the difference.
Over four feet, Pennsylvania wants an engineer. Plenty of firms build to three-foot-eleven and call it done. We will tell you which one you actually need.
The people who dig it are the people who build it and the people who come back. Nobody hands your site to a company you have never met.
In the contract, not in the sales conversation. We also come back at two years to look at it whether you call us or not.
Where we work
One crew, one region. We do not take work we cannot reach with a machine before seven in the morning, because a wall goes wrong in the hours nobody is watching.
Not listed? Call anyway — if it is inside forty minutes of Carnegie the answer is usually yes.
The questions we actually get
Around $38 to $70 per square face foot in this market, depending on access, whether it needs engineering and what the drainage has to do. A typical two-tier residential wall runs $22,000 to $60,000. You get a per-line price before anything is committed.
In most Allegheny County municipalities, yes, over four feet — and some want one over three. We check your township, prepare the packet and file it. It is not an extra line on the invoice.
Water, nearly every time. Saturated backfill weighs roughly twice what drained backfill weighs, and the wall was designed for the drained number. Almost every failure we are called to repair has no drainage stone and no pipe behind it.
A straightforward wall is one to two weeks on site. Add two to six weeks ahead of that if it needs engineering and a permit. Anything with a terrace on top is usually eight to twelve weeks start to finish.
Usually. We run a compact track loader that fits through a 36‑inch gate, and where nothing fits we have carried block by hand. It costs more and we will say so at the site visit rather than at invoice.
Five years on the structure — movement, separation, failure of the drainage we installed. Settling of planting beds and efflorescence on block are normal and are not defects; we explain which is which at handover rather than argue about it later.
Free site visit
Ninety minutes on site, no charge, and a straight answer on whether it needs engineering before anybody talks about price.
Monday to Friday, 6.30am–5pm
Saturday mornings, March to November
We will call the number you gave to fix a time. If it is urgent — a wall that has moved since the last rain — ring (412) 555-0163 and say so.