Commercial slope remediation,
installed to your engineer's design.
Helical tieback anchors, wall stabilization, and structural support on commercial hillside sites. Slope movement is slow and quiet, and it is cheapest to address while it still is.
Who This Page Is For
The hill moves slowly. The budget does not.
Slope remediation is engineered work bought by general contractors, owners, and the engineers who design it. This page describes what we install and where our scope sits.
General contractors
A hillside pad, a failing site wall, or a slope condition that showed up in the geotechnical report. You need a sub who installs to the engineer’s design and documents it.
Owners and owner representatives
Slope movement is slow until it is not. What it costs to address is closely tied to how early it is addressed.
Engineers and geotechnical firms
We have worked with engineering firms on slope conditions across Southern California, and we install the anchor and wall systems they design.
What We Install
Four systems, one idea.
Everything below does the same thing: it transfers load off soil that is moving and onto soil that is not.
Helical tieback anchors
A helical tieback is a helical pile installed at an angle rather than vertically, commonly somewhere between twenty and thirty degrees. It is driven through the loose fill and anchored into competent load bearing soil well behind the wall. On one failing wall of almost 500 feet, 53 tiebacks went in to an average depth of around fifty feet, tying the wall back to soil roughly fifty feet away so it stopped leaning and rotating.
Tiebacks through an existing wall
Where a site retaining wall is still sound, a waler beam is run along the face, core holes are drilled through it, and the anchors are screwed through into competent soil behind. Weep holes usually go in at the same time, because inadequate drainage behind the wall is often what caused the failure in the first place. That is a far smaller job than replacing the wall, which is the main reason early attention pays.
Carbon fiber as a waler
On some walls the waler is carbon fiber rather than steel. The wall is sandblasted and ground, a layer of fiber infused epoxy goes down, the carbon fiber is laid in and worked tight, and a final epoxy layer saturates it so it bonds and acts as a continuous tie between the anchors.
New wall with anchors
Where a wall has been compromised too far, it is rebuilt and anchored against the lateral soil load. That design comes from the engineer, and we install it. These jobs get large: one failing hillside wall took 89 helical piles and 98 helical tiebacks, with forty waler beams and ninety six core drilled locations, all to an outside engineer’s design.
Structures on the slope
When a building on the slope has moved with it, the same anchor system can tie the structure back into native soil, with piers under it where the engineer calls for vertical support as well.
The residential page on how tieback anchors resist lateral load covers the same system in plainer language, our soil stabilization page covers the ground itself, retaining wall repair covers the wall at house scale, residential hillside repair covers a slope behind a single home, and our commercial services page carries the rest of the GC facing work.
Commercial slope remediation: see the anchors.
A published DCI job on a failing commercial wall of almost 500 feet, anchored with 53 helical tiebacks and tied together with carbon fiber walers rather than steel.
What Is Actually Moving
Slope creep, in plain terms.
Before the systems make sense, the movement has to. This is what we are usually looking at on a commercial hillside site.
Slope creep is slow, not sudden
Creep is the gradual downward displacement of soil, rock, and organic material under gravity. It is not a landslide or a mudslide, and treating it like one leads to both bad decisions and bad prices. What it does is produce lateral movement, which is what damages walls, hardscape, and structures over time.
Two directions of trouble
A site can be sitting on a slope that is moving away and downward beneath it, or sitting below a slope that is moving towards it. The evidence looks different in each case, and so does the fix.
What makes it worse
Poor drainage, little or no vegetation holding the surface, and seismic activity all accelerate movement that was already happening. Water is usually the accelerant worth checking first.
Why early is cheaper
Anchoring a sound wall is a much smaller job than rebuilding a failed one, and a structure that has not yet moved does not need lifting and leveling on top of the anchor work. The gap between those two scopes is the reason we push for an evaluation early.
How The Work Runs
Four steps on a hillside site.
Access and engineering decide almost everything about a slope job, so both are settled before a crew mobilizes.
- 01Site walk and evidenceTilted walls, stairstep cracking in property line walls, widening gaps between hardscape and structure, and hardscape pulling away are what a slope tells you before anything dramatic happens.
- 02Engineering and soils boringsSlope work is engineered work. Soils borings come first, then anchor length, spacing, angle, and capacity are set by the engineer of record, not by us.
- 03Written proposalScope, anchor counts, access requirements, exclusions, and a schedule. Warranty terms are provided in writing with the proposal.
- 04Install and recordAnchors are installed to the approved design and recorded. Access, staging, and the order of work are agreed before crews mobilize.
Scope
What we will and will not claim.
Slope work attracts alarming language. Here is ours, without it.
- Slope work is engineered work. We install the design; we do not stamp it.
- Access governs price on hillside sites more than almost anything else, so it is scoped up front. Scaffolding has been designed and fabricated in house where a slope left no other way to reach the wall.
- Slope movement is usually slow. It is not a landslide, and we will not describe it as one to sell a repair.
- Hillside work is concentrated in our California markets.
- Arizona work is performed under Arizona ROC license 330307, class KB-1, a dual commercial and residential classification.
What contractors and owners ask about slope work.
Don't see your question here? Our team is happy to help. Reach out anytime.
Gaps opening between hardscape and a structure, stairstep cracks in property line walls, retaining walls tilting or cracking, and deck support beams kicking outward. These are signs worth an evaluation, not proof of a specific cause. The evaluation comes first.
Care and expertise from a team that's been doing this since 2011.
Dalinghaus Foundation Repair is locally owned and operated, with crews dedicated exclusively to foundation, concrete, and crawl space work across California, Arizona, and Nevada.
Foundation repair, concrete leveling, and crawl space repair are our entire focus. Not a sideline.
More than 2,000 projects on the clay and desert soils of California, Arizona, and Nevada since 2011.
CSLB License #983851 in California, ROC #330307 in Arizona, and License #0089738 in Nevada. Look us up with the state before we ever set foot on your property.
Warranty terms come in writing with every proposal, and the terms that apply to your job are stated in that job's paperwork. Ask your project specialist during the free evaluation.
Tell us about your commercial project.
Share the project address and the services you need, and add photos of the site if you have them. A member of our team will follow up.
Let's take the first step toward solid ground.
Tell us about the project, add photos of the site if you have them, and a project manager will follow up.