Retaining walls in Gray, Maine.
Gray's ground rolls. The soil map for the town shows Suffield silt loams on eroded slopes of 8 to 25 percent, very stony Hermon and Paxton till on hillsides, and rocky Lyman-Abram ridges where bedrock sits about a foot and a half down. Walls here hold back driveway cuts, level out yards for a lawn, and stabilize banks above the lakes.
We build granite veneer, natural boulder and segmental block walls. Where the wall goes and what it retains decide which one fits a Gray property.
The low-wall exception near the water
Gray's Shoreland Zoning Ordinance treats a retaining wall that is not needed for erosion control like any other structure: it must meet the full water setback, which is 100 feet from a GPA great pond. The ordinance carves out one exception for low walls. They must be at least 25 feet from the water, the site must already be altered with no effective vegetated buffer, the ground must be existing lawn or eroding soil that planting alone cannot hold, the walls together can total no more than 24 inches of height, and they must sit outside the 100-year floodplain.
Walls that are necessary for shoreline stabilization are handled separately, because the setback does not apply to structures that need direct access to the water. On a Little Sebago or Forest Lake lot, the design starts with which of those categories the wall falls in.
Silt, till and frost behind the wall
Suffield soils are glaciolacustrine silts, and the Lamoine and Scantic series are glaciomarine silt loams that the NRCS rates somewhat poorly to poorly drained. Silt holds water and heaves when it freezes, so a wall retaining it needs free-draining stone behind the face and a perforated drain at the base with somewhere to discharge. Paxton and Woodbridge till is firmer but has a dense layer near twenty inches that perches water on top of it. Hinckley and Windsor sands drain well and are easy to cut, but they slump if left open.
Boulder walls suit the stony till slopes where the stone is already part of the landscape. Segmental block with geogrid is the usual answer for a tall cut behind a new driveway. Granite veneer fits the village lots, where a wall is often part of the entrance.
Driveway cuts in the Lake District
Gray's Lake District covers the lake watersheds outside the shoreland zone. There, the zoning ordinance limits road and driveway banks to a slope no steeper than two horizontal to one vertical, graded and stabilized against erosion. When a driveway has to climb a slope steeper than that, a wall is often how the cut is held.
Granite · Boulder · Block
How we handle retaining walls
Whether it is a granite veneer entry wall with lantern pillars, a terraced boulder slope or a structural block wall behind a new build, we engineer for drainage and frost so the wall you pay for once stands for decades.
See the full retaining walls service page or everything we do in Gray, Maine.
Retaining Walls in nearby towns
- Retaining Walls in North Yarmouth
- Retaining Walls in New Gloucester
- Retaining Walls in Windham
- Retaining Walls in Cumberland
- Retaining Walls in Yarmouth
More services in Gray
- Hardscaping in Gray
- Landscaping in Gray
- Landscape Design in Gray
- Planting & Garden Beds in Gray
- Hydroseeding, Sod & Turf in Gray
- Lawn Aeration & Overseeding in Gray
- Fall Cleanup & Leaf Removal in Gray
- Commercial Mowing & Cleanups in Gray
- Excavation & Land Clearing in Gray
- Septic Systems in Gray
- Tree & Shrub Services in Gray
- Tree Removal in Gray
Free Estimates
Retaining Walls in Gray? Let's talk.
Tell us about your property and we will walk it with you — free estimates, straight answers, stonework guaranteed to hold its lines.
Mon–Sat 7:00am – 5:00pm · Based in Cumberland, Maine