Retaining Walls - Allegheny County
Mt. Lebanon's housing stock is mostly interwar - brick and stone homes from the 1920s and 30s on tight, deep lots that step down from the street. That layout produces a very specific wall problem: short walls holding driveway cuts and side yards, many of them original to the house and none of them built with modern drainage. Mature street trees add root pressure that newer suburbs don't have to deal with.
Mt. Lebanon filled in mostly between the wars, and the brick and stone homes from the 1920s and 30s along and off Washington Road came with a particular layout: deep, narrow lots stepping down from the street, with short walls holding driveway cuts and side yards. Many of those walls are original to the house.
Built well for their day, they were almost never drained the way we would drain a wall now. That is why age tells us less here than what is happening behind the face.
The street trees are old enough to matter. Roots widen existing joints, lift base courses and quietly redirect water into places it was not meant to go. We look at what is growing above and behind a wall before pricing a repair, because a reset that ignores the root that caused it will not hold.
Lot width is the other constraint. Side yards here are frequently too narrow for machinery, so access work shapes the method, and material sometimes comes in by hand.
On visible frontages, cut stone sits properly with the housing stock where a modern face would not. Behind the house, block is the practical choice, with concrete where a drive sits close above. Drainage comes first on nearly every job, whether it is a new wall, a terrace, or a boulder edge on a wooded rear lot.
Retaining wall work across Allegheny, Butler and Washington counties:
Free - No Obligation
Send a few details and we'll come look at it. Photos help - a picture of a lean or a crack tells us more than a paragraph.