Hardscaping in Lake Forest Park

As much as it takes to get the usable area you actually want, which is a budget question more than a technical one. Each terrace is a wall plus the fill and drainage behind it, so usable flat ground is bought by the square foot here in a way it is not on level land. The useful exercise before designing is to decide how much level ground you genuinely need — people frequently find that two good terraces serve them better than four mediocre ones.

Walls over four feet measured from the bottom of the footing need a permit, and on ravine ground walls reach that quickly. Steep-slope and critical-area designations can also apply, which removes the exemption regardless of height. Terracing into shorter walls avoids the threshold where the ground allows it. We establish the position for the specific parcel before quoting, because the answer varies street to street here more than in flatter parts of the region.

It concentrates, which is the single most important thing to design for. A ravine is a watercourse that is dry most of the year, and surface water from the upland above arrives through the garden rather than around it. Hardscape that blocks or narrows that path without providing an alternative tends to find out about it during the first serious November storm. We design the route first and fit the patios and walls into it, not the other way round.

It depends entirely on the approach, and it is the first thing we look at. Where there is a route for a mini-excavator the job is straightforward; where the only access is down a wooded slope, material handling becomes the dominant cost and some designs stop being economic. Tree cover matters twice over — for access, and because excavating near significant roots constrains where walls and bases can go. We walk the site before pricing rather than quoting from a plan.