Four generations and over 100 years of structural masonry heritage behind every installation. We design-build heavy-duty retaining walls for Southern California complex slopes, coordinating licensed structural engineers and managing lateral soil pressure and strict seismic codes from design through construction.
4,350+ structural and masonry projects completed in Southern California, rated 4.9 out of 5 across more than 300 verified Google and Yelp reviews, fully licensed, bonded, and BBB accredited.
Our portfolio highlights retaining wall installations built to perform under extreme hillside conditions and strict municipal building codes, from the Hollywood Hills to Pacific Palisades.
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“We had two contractors tell us the driveway wall just needed patching. DiBara had an engineer look at the footing, showed us why it was moving, and installed a new wall with proper drainage. Straight answers the whole way through.”
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With more than 4,300 structural projects completed across Southern California, we install retaining walls built to perform under extreme hillside conditions and strict municipal building codes. Every wall is tailored to stabilize your specific soil profile, protect your structural footprint, and turn an unstable slope into secure, usable land, with a single team accountable from the first site visit to the final LADBS inspection.
National recognition does not build a wall on your hillside. Local experience does. Every award on this page, including Best Masonry Company in Los Angeles 2025 and recognition by the U.S. Congress, ties back to completed, permitted, and inspected work across four generations of the same family business.
Standard masonry contractors often overlook the lateral forces a shifting hillside exerts. We design-build integrated structural systems: a licensed structural engineer is brought into every project that requires calculations, and we stay accountable from design through final inspection. By analyzing soil mechanics, active water tables, and seismic load factors alongside our engineering partners, we install walls that turn geological risk into a reliable structural asset, whether the right system for your site is poured concrete, properly engineered concrete block, or shotcrete. Our comparison of the three concrete systems lays out the trade-offs.
In Los Angeles, any retaining wall stabilizing a slope or measuring over 4 feet from the bottom of the footing requires structural engineering calculations and formal city permits. Hillside zoning can trigger those same requirements below 4 feet, and LADBS restricts how close a footing or structure can sit next to a wall, generally within a horizontal distance equal to the wall height unless the adjacent ground is level. See our guide to footings, depths, and setbacks and our overview of 2026 LADBS requirements.
We manage the entire lifecycle of the build, combining engineered steel reinforcement schedules with subsurface drainage layouts that address the primary cause of retaining wall failure: hidden hydrostatic pressure. As your design-build contractor, we catch setback and zoning issues before they become a stop-work order mid-project. Our drainage guide explains what goes in behind the wall.
The material determines whether a wall stands for decades or fails during the next wet season, but so does workmanship: a properly engineered, fully grouted, correctly waterproofed concrete block wall can perform on par with poured concrete for many applications. We install exclusively with heavy-duty, code-compliant materials and our own experienced crews.
Reinforced CMU (concrete block): heavily reinforced with interior rebar matrices, fully solid-grouted, and carefully waterproofed at every joint for superior seismic resistance. A well-built block wall is a different construction method from poured concrete, not a lesser one. Explore our Los Angeles block wall solutions.
Cast-in-place structural concrete: architectural precision and extreme load capacity, with maximum density and long service life on taller walls. Learn more about our structural concrete services.
Architectural brick and natural stone veneers: world-class aesthetics over a reinforced concrete core, for historic estates and high-value residential landscaping. See our stonework and stone restoration or brickwork installations. High-risk walls also receive full foundation waterproofing layers.
From initial soil assessment to final LADBS sign-off, one company manages every step rather than several disconnected vendors. We begin with a preliminary estimate and scope assessment based on your property layout, grading requirements, and objectives, priced against realistic Southern California material averages. A structural masonry technician then performs an on-site design inspection and soil diagnostic, evaluating slope stability, active water runoff patterns, and site access constraints to lock in a fixed price and a firm execution timeline. Within 72 hours you receive a detailed design proposal, prepared in the exact format our partner structural engineers and LADBS reviewers need for efficient calculation approvals and permit processing. Permit timing rests with the city, so we keep you informed rather than promise dates.
The choice of structural mechanics depends heavily on your property soil composition, available space, and total load requirements, and it is one of the first things we assess on a site visit. Most hillside properties in Los Angeles end up using one of the three systems below, sometimes combined on a single lot where different sections carry different loads.
Cantilevered retaining walls: an L-shaped or T-shaped structural footprint converts the vertical weight of the soil behind the wall into stabilizing downward pressure on the footing. This style demands precision in steel rebar scheduling and high-strength concrete execution.
Gravity retaining walls: mass, volume, and density hold back the earth. These suit localized landscape grading and terraced tiers, and we often reinforce older unreinforced gravity structures rather than removing them.
Anchored and tieback retaining walls: for heavy hillside loads and steep canyons, structural steel anchors are driven into stable bedrock, mechanically tying the wall system into the hill.
Every mason on our team is trained in structural work: complex rebar layouts, grading requirements, and integrations with existing concrete driveways and foundations. Because we are a design-build company, the crew trained to that standard is the crew that shows up on your job, not subcontracted labor assembled for the project. Our lifespan and maintenance guide explains what that difference means in years of service.
Hillside retaining walls and slope stabilization · heavy-duty structural concrete construction · subsurface drainage and foundation waterproofing · architectural brickwork and facade rebuilds · premium stonework and historic masonry restoration · structural driveway construction and grading · masonry walkways and tiered step construction.
Request a structural consultation or call (323) 313-0165 to speak with a project manager about your slope.
This page has been reviewed and approved by Matt DiBara, a 4th-generation master mason and co-owner of DiBara Masonry. Structural engineering calculations on permitted projects are performed by the licensed third-party structural engineer we coordinate, not by DiBara Masonry directly. Hazard zoning referenced here can be verified against the California Geological Survey hazard maps.
Usually, yes. According to the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS), any retaining wall exceeding 4 feet in height, measured from the bottom of the subterranean footing to the top of the wall, requires formal structural calculations, a geotechnical soils report, and an approved building permit. Any wall stabilizing a steep or active slope, or located in a hillside grading zone, requires a permit regardless of height.
Construction itself typically runs from a few days for a short garden wall to several weeks for a tall engineered hillside wall, driven by excavation, footing size, curing time, and site access. The bigger variable is plan check and permitting, which sits with the city. We give you a firm construction timeline after the site visit and keep you updated on the permit side rather than promising city dates.
Trapped hydrostatic pressure, not the weight of the soil itself. When rain saturates hillside clay, water pools behind the wall. Without weep holes, perforated subdrain pipes, or drainage panels, or with a broken irrigation line quietly saturating the soil, that pressure will crack, bow, or collapse the structure. Seismic loading is the second leading cause in unreinforced historic walls. See why walls fail early in LA.
Every wall we install gets an integrated, multi-layered drainage system: an engineered French drain at the heel of the footing, perforated PVC wrapped in geo-textile filter fabric, washed crushed rock in the backfill zone, and drainage exit ports directing water away from foundations. High-risk walls also receive foundation waterproofing. Details are in our drainage guide.
When it is engineered, fully grouted, correctly reinforced, and properly waterproofed by an experienced crew, yes. A well-built block wall performs on par with poured concrete for many applications. The performance gap between the two systems is almost always about workmanship, not the material.
LADBS generally restricts placing a new footing or structure within a horizontal distance equal to the wall height from the wall, front or back, unless the adjacent ground is level. We build this setback-by-height rule into every design from the start. Our footings guide covers it in detail.
Typically once a wall approaches roughly 4.5 to 5 feet, since above that point soil conditions vary too much across a Los Angeles hillside for an engineer to estimate without site-specific data. In hillside grading or landslide-risk zones, that threshold can drop to 4 feet.
Yes, and it is one of our most common installations. Standard pressure-treated timber walls in Los Angeles typically need replacement within 10 to 20 years as rot and insect damage set in. We replace them with code-compliant reinforced CMU or poured concrete that will not decay, and we correct the drainage the original wall was usually missing.
It means DiBara Masonry manages the structural engineer relationship, the LADBS permit submittal, and the physical construction under one roof and one point of contact, instead of you coordinating separate vendors. Most retaining wall problems we are called to repair originated in the gap between an engineer, a permit runner, and a builder who never fully coordinated with each other.
With correct engineering, reinforcement, and drainage, both poured concrete and properly built CMU block walls regularly exceed 50 years, and 75-plus is realistic with today codes and detailing. Our lifespan and maintenance guide breaks that down by material and lists what shortens it.
Cost is driven by height, length, excavation, access, materials, soil conditions, and drainage. We provide a clear fixed price after the on-site design inspection, with no hidden surprises. Our 2026 cost guide gives realistic ranges by wall type and height so you can budget before the visit.
Yes. We install and repair retaining walls for single-family homes, multi-unit residential properties, and commercial sites across Los Angeles, including landslide-prone and seismic-prone zones in the Hollywood Hills, Laurel Canyon, Bel Air, Silver Lake, and Pacific Palisades.
Meet DiBara Masonry, the 4th generation masonry and concrete experts that have been restoring brick, stone, & concrete structures for over 100 years!
