Retaining Walls in Lenexa, KS

A retaining wall in Lenexa holds when its footing sits on firm, undisturbed bearing, its stem is reinforced for the lateral earth pressure behind it, and a drainage path carries water out before it stacks against the face. On Lenexa's graded lots the wall also has to carry surcharge — the load from the driveway, patio, or uphill grade sitting above it.

Most of Lenexa west of I-35 — the City Center corridor, Renner Boulevard, the Falcon Valley and Canyon Creek subdivisions — is built on engineered fill over Johnson County clay-loam. When a builder cuts into a slope and rebuilds it flat, the wall that holds the new grade is holding placed soil, not the hillside it looks like. That soil settles and swells differently than undisturbed ground, so the wall has to be designed for it. That is the engineering behind every concrete retaining wall we build across the metro.

Lenexa's low ground drains into Little Mill Creek and the Cedar Creek headwaters, and the clay-loam between holds water long after a storm. Water trapped behind a wall builds hydrostatic pressure — a force that can push over a wall the earth alone never would.

So every wall we build gets a drainage column: clean drainage aggregate against the back face, a perforated drain wrapped in filter fabric at the base, and weep outlets that let water leave. Backfill goes in compacted lifts so it never settles into a basin that feeds water back toward the stem. On a Lenexa lot, the drainage is the wall.