Every retaining wall that fails in this area fails the same way: not enough dug out behind it, no proper granular base, no drainage behind the wall. The dig is the part you can't see and the part that decides whether the wall lasts. We do the excavation and base work for armour stone and segmental block walls — the cut, the compacted base, the drainage stone and pipe behind, and machine placement of armour stone that's far too heavy to move by hand.
We work two ways: directly for homeowners on straightforward garden and driveway-edge walls, and as the machine crew for landscapers and contractors on bigger jobs. Guelph's rolling lots — Kortright Hills, the ravine edges, sloped backyards in the south end — generate constant retaining work, and the machine time is usually a small share of the total wall cost done right.
In most Ontario municipalities, walls retaining over about 1 metre — or supporting a driveway or structure — need engineered design. Below that, it's generally fine without. We'll flag it honestly before any work starts.
Water and frost. Without drainage stone and a pipe behind the wall, water sits, freezes, and pushes. The fix is built into the dig — that's why the excavation spec matters more than the stone you pick.
Usually. A mini-ex fits through roughly a 36–42 inch opening, and fence panels can come out and go back for bigger machines. Access is the first thing we look at in a quote.
We coordinate supply from local quarries and have it delivered to the job, then place it. You pay quarry pricing for the stone rather than a marked-up bundle.