Retaining Walls in Eringate–Centennial

A side-split is designed around a change in grade: the garage and family room at one level, the bedrooms half a floor up, and the yard has to follow. When these houses went up in the 1960s and 70s, the steps in the ground were usually held by landscape timbers, railway ties or thin poured concrete. Fifty-odd years later, those are the walls most likely to be failing: soft, split timbers bowing outward, and concrete with a crack running down the middle.

The fix is rarely one big wall. A stepped lot is easier to hold with two or three short walls, each on its own compacted gravel footing with clear stone behind it. Short walls let water out before it builds up pressure, they're easier to build in a side yard, and each level gives you a flat strip for planting or a path. Where a wall meets the front entrance or the driveway, we match its block or stone to the steps so the house doesn't end up with three different materials.

Some lots near Centennial Park and the creek valleys back onto ravine land. On those, Toronto's Ravine and Natural Feature Protection by-law or TRCA regulation can apply to grading and tree removal, and we check the mapping before design. Height carries its own rule: a wall over 1 m of exposed height beside a public sidewalk, a building entrance or a public space is a designated structure under the Ontario Building Code and needs a permit. Old ties and treated timbers also need proper disposal, which is part of the removal plan.