Retaining Wall Contractor in Burnaby

Burnaby is our home base, and retaining wall work is woven into the character of this city. Burnaby sits across a series of hills, ridges, and valleys — Burnaby Mountain, Capitol Hill, Deer Lake, the Central Valley — and the residential neighbourhoods draped across this terrain are full of sloped lots that require retaining walls to create usable outdoor space and stable foundations.

We work across all of Burnaby's distinct neighbourhoods: Metrotown, Brentwood, Highgate, Heights, Edmonds, Burnaby Mountain, West Burnaby, and beyond. We know the soil conditions, the drainage patterns, and the City of Burnaby's building permit requirements. When we quote a job in Burnaby, we're not estimating blind — we've built walls on the street next to yours.

Burnaby's Terrain and Soil Conditions

Burnaby's landscape is defined by the geological legacy of glaciation. The Pleistocene-era ice sheets that covered this region left behind a complex mix of soils: compact glacial till on the higher elevations of Burnaby Mountain and Capitol Hill, marine clays in the valley areas (particularly the Central Valley corridor), and sandy outwash deposits on the lower slopes and near the Fraser River.

For retaining wall builders, this soil variability matters enormously. Glacial till is typically a good foundation material — dense and strong — but its surface is often covered by organic topsoil and redeposited material that needs to be removed before placing a footing. Marine clay is problematic: it's weak, compressible under load, and expands when saturated. Walls founded on clay need wider footings to distribute load, and they need excellent drainage because saturated clay exerts significant lateral pressure on wall faces.

In many Burnaby neighbourhoods, particularly those developed in the postwar boom, retaining walls were built without any of this soil knowledge applied. They were built by homeowners or general contractors who didn't understand soil mechanics. Those walls are the ones we're repairing and replacing today.

City of Burnaby Retaining Wall Requirements

The City of Burnaby requires a building permit for retaining walls over 1.2 metres (approximately 4 feet) in height, measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall. The 1.2m measurement applies to each individual wall — a series of terraced walls that are each under 1.2m are generally treated as individual structures, though complex terraced systems near property lines warrant consultation with the building department.

Additional permit triggers include: walls within 0.6m of a property line (regardless of height), walls supporting a building or structure, walls adjacent to a public right-of-way, and any wall where the building official determines the public safety warrants review.

Permit applications for walls over 1.2m typically require a site plan showing the wall location relative to property lines, a cross-section drawing of the wall construction, and for walls over approximately 1.5m, engineering calculations stamped by a registered professional engineer.

We manage the permit process for every project that requires one. Our project documentation meets the City of Burnaby's submission requirements.

Drainage in Burnaby's Wet Climate

Burnaby receives approximately 1,500mm of annual rainfall, the majority of which falls between October and March. The wet season coincides with low evapotranspiration rates (leaves off the trees, cool temperatures), so soils become fully saturated quickly and stay that way for months.

For retaining walls, this extended saturation period is the design condition that matters. A drainage system that can handle a single heavy rain event but not six months of near-continuous infiltration is going to fail in Burnaby.

We design drainage for the worst-case scenario: a fully saturated soil mass behind the wall, with all the hydrostatic pressure that implies. This means generously-sized drainage aggregate layers, properly sloped and outlet-connected perforated pipe, weep holes at regular intervals, and surface grading that prevents direct water from being directed behind the wall.