Concrete Retaining Walls in Carnation, WA

Retaining walls in Carnation: what to know

Carnation’s standards say the city has no stormwater conveyance network able to accept runoff from areas outside its existing tributary areas, so each site handles its own water. For a wall, that means the drain behind it has to reach an outlet on your own lot, not the street and not a neighbor’s ground. We plan that outlet before the footing goes in.

The state exemption turns on the height from the footing’s underside to the wall’s upper edge, and on whether a surcharge bears on the wall. Any load that counts as a surcharge changes the answer, so we measure it before the footing is poured. The road standards add a separate limit for rock-faced walls that hold up a road embankment: four feet above the keyway where the soil is stable, with an engineer’s design above that height.

Permits and rules in Carnation

We measure the height from the footing’s underside to the wall’s upper edge, count any surcharge bearing on it, and confirm whether the wall sits in or against the public right-of-way, since work there needs a right-of-way permit. The drainage permit excludes single-family work, but best management practices still apply, so we check the drain outlet for your address before the trench opens. We confirm each point with Carnation before we quote the wall.

Rules change and vary by parcel, so we confirm the current requirements with the city before we start.

How we approach it

Measure from the footing’s underside, not the visible face
Count any load bearing on the wall as a possible surcharge until it is measured
Route the drain to a discharge point on your own lot, never onto the road
Obtain a right-of-way permit before any wall work reaches into the road corridor

For the full process, see our Retaining Walls page.

Building in the cold months? See our guide to winter concrete pours.

Our retaining walls work, serving Carnation

Examples of our work. We build retaining walls in Carnation and the cities around it. See all of our work

Questions from Carnation homeowners

Can a Carnation wall skip the building permit at four feet?

Under the state residential code, a wall four feet or less, measured from the footing’s underside to the upper edge, needs no building permit when no surcharge bears on it. We check the surcharge and the wall’s location before we design it.

Must a Carnation wall also carry a drainage permit?

Not for single-family work. The standards exclude single-family residential development from the drainage permit, although best management practices still apply, so the drain behind the wall gets planned either way.

Who signs off on a Carnation wall that touches the right-of-way?

Work inside the public right-of-way needs a right-of-way or street use permit from the Public Works Director. A wall on private ground that carries a driveway or sidewalk load gets that load checked first, and we ask the city before we design the footing.