Research

The height at which a retaining wall needs a permit

Name: Retaining-wall permit and engineering thresholds, selected US jurisdictions
Creator: HyreYard Research Desk
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

19 jurisdictions and 4 model or state codes, each with the measuring point, the surcharge that lowers the threshold, and the ordinance we opened. Not a national map. Not a design.

Updated September 2026 · Data as of Codes and bulletins retrieved 5 September 2026

Written by HyreYard Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking

19 cities, counties and state codes read 4 model or state-model rows beside them

9 rows that are not a 4-ft exemption Of 23 · retrieved 5 September 2026

5 headline numbers below 4 feet Phoenix 3 ft · Menlo Park 2 ft · Pierce County 2 ft with surcharge

The finding

The four-foot retaining-wall rule of thumb is the International Residential Code’s permit exemption, not a national law. IRC 2024 R105.2 Building item 3 exempts “retaining walls that are not over 4 feet (1219 mm) in height measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall, unless supporting a surcharge.” Cities adopt an edition, amend the number, change the measuring point, or add a hillside, flood or critical-area overlay. HyreYard read 23 codes, bulletins and department pages on 5 September 2026. 9 of those rows are not a 4-foot exemption — the number is different, unpublished, or the exemption is 4 feet only if other conditions are also true. 5 set a headline number below 4 feet. Phoenix, AZ is 3 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or III-A liquids, measured top of footing to top of wall — not the IRC’s bottom of footing. Menlo Park, CA is 2 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or III liquids. Elsewhere the exemption survives only with conditions attached — a surcharge, a critical-area overlay, a property line — and the table below sets out each one. This page covers the jurisdictions we actually read. It is not every US city. Anything retaining or bearing on a house foundation is a different problem, on a different site. This is not legal advice, and it is not a wall design. Confirm with the building department before you dig.

What this page is not

Freestanding landscape retaining walls only. A wall that retains or bears on a house foundation, undercuts a footing, or holds a building is a foundation condition. That work belongs to a different trade and a different HYRE site. It is out of scope here even when the same height number appears in the residential code.

Not a design, and not DIY structural instruction. Above the local threshold, or any surcharge — a slope above the wall, a driveway behind it, a pool, a fence on top, tiered walls inside the code’s horizontal window — stop and hire an engineer or a licensed contractor who will pull the permit. HyreYard does not build walls.

Not a national table. Inclusion is the jurisdictions whose adopted code, information bulletin or department page we opened on 5 September 2026, concentrated on HyreYard’s seven roster states (TX, AZ, WA, CA, OR, FL, NC) plus Denver, Douglas County and New York City. A city not in the table is not a city with a 4-foot rule.

The 4-foot rule is a model exemption, not the law

Source fact — IRC 2024 R105.2. IRC 2024 R105.2 Building item 3; R404.4; R312.1.1. The exemption is 4 feet measured from the bottom of the footing to the top of the wall, unless the wall supports a surcharge. R404.4 separately requires accepted engineering practice for walls not laterally supported at the top that retain more than 48 inches of unbalanced fill, or walls exceeding 24 inches that resist lateral loads in addition to soil. Safety factor 1.5 against sliding and overturning. R404.4 “does not apply to foundation walls supporting buildings.”

Source fact — IBC 2024 §105.2 / §1807.2. The commercial twin is also 4 feet from the bottom of the footing, unless surcharge or impounding Class I, II or IIIA liquids. Design for overturning, sliding, foundation pressure and water uplift. Segmental units: ASTM C1372.

HyreYard analysis: blogs that print “retaining walls under 4 feet don’t need a permit” are restating the model’s exemption and dropping the measuring point, the surcharge clause, and the fact of local amendment. The measuring point is doing more work than the number. A 3-foot exposed face on a 12-inch footing is a 4-foot wall if you measure from the bottom of the footing, and a 3-foot wall if you measure from the top. Phoenix uses the top. The IRC uses the bottom. They are not the same wall.

Where the number is not 4 feet

Phoenix, AZ — 3 feet, top of footing. Phoenix Building Construction Code Admin. 105.2.2; TRT/DOC/00181 (rev. July 2013, still the published guideline). Permit exemption is 3 feet unless surcharge or Class I, II or III-A liquids. Surcharge includes a house, building, road, swimming pool, or a fence on the wall or within 3 feet of the uphill side. Combinations of retaining wall and fence require structural calculations regardless of location and overall height.

Menlo Park, CA — 2 feet, top of footing. Menlo Park Municipal Code Ch. 12.06, amending CBC §105.2 Building item 4. Half the model number, and a different measuring point. Surcharge or impounding Class I, II or III liquids removes the 2-foot exemption.

Pierce County, WA — 4 feet without surcharge; 2 feet with one. Pierce County Planning & Public Works, “Residential Retaining Walls Permits and Exceptions,” rev. 26 Mar 2024 (2021 International Codes). Walls over 2 feet that support a surcharge require permitting. Surcharge within a 45-degree angle of the bottom of the footing counts. This is the IRC’s 24-inch additional-lateral-load engineering trigger, written as a permit trigger. A driveway behind a 30-inch wall is a permit wall.

North Carolina 2024 Residential Code — 5 feet of unbalanced backfill. R404.4 requires a registered design professional if an individual wall supports more than 5 feet of unbalanced backfill within 15 feet horizontally, or if multiple walls provide more than 5 feet of cumulative vertical relief within 15 feet. Property-line walls are engineered at any height. That is looser than the model’s 48 inches on the height number and stricter on the property line. It replaced a 4-foot / 48-inch rule in the 2018 code.

Tucson — not stated as a 4-foot number on the PDSD exemptions page we retrieved. Engineered plans may be required if the wall “functions as a retaining wall by holding back soil or changing ground level.” We did not guess 4 feet.

Headline number is 4 ft (with or without extra triggers)14 rows

Headline number below 4 ft5 rows

Headline number above 4 ft2 rows

Height not stated in the page we retrieved2 rows

HyreYard classification of 23 rows, retrieved 5 September 2026. A 4-foot bar is not a finding that those jurisdictions are “the 4-foot rule.” Seattle and Austin keep 4 feet and then add conditions that swallow the exemption.

Surcharge, tiers and measuring point — the clauses that eat the exemption

The number on the brochure is the easy half. The clauses next to it are why a “compliant” wall is illegal.

Measuring point. IRC and IBC: bottom of the footing to the top of the wall, including the part underground. Phoenix and Menlo Park: top of the footing. North Carolina: unbalanced backfill, and Cary’s handout measures wall height from grade at the face. 12 non-model rows in this table do not use the IRC’s bottom-of-footing instruction.

Surcharge. A slope above the wall, a driveway, a parking pad, a pool, a fence on top, or another wall uphill. Portland’s hillside lots often make the 4-foot number irrelevant because a 3:1 (or steeper) backslope is already a surcharge. Austin added flood hazard to the model exemption: a 3-foot wall in the floodplain is not the garden-wall exemption.

Tiers. North Carolina sums vertical relief inside 15 feet horizontally. A pair of 3-foot walls that together make 6 feet of relief is the engineered case, not two exempt walls.

Neighbour and critical area. Seattle requires all three: 4 feet or lower, no Environmentally Critical Area, and the wall will not damage adjoining properties. A wall at the property line is given as an example that fails the third test.

HyreYard analysis: the useful question is not “is it under 4 feet.” It is “what does this city measure, what counts as surcharge, and does a grading permit sit beside the building permit.” A bid that is silent on those three is not a bid you can compare.

Model and state codes

Jurisdiction	Permit height	Measuring point	Surcharge / extra	Citation
IRC 2024 (model code)	4 ft, unless supporting a surcharge	Bottom of footing → top of wall	Any surcharge removes the R105.2 permit exemption, at any height.	IRC 2024 R105.2 Building item 3; R404.4; R312.1.1
IBC 2024 (model code)	4 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or IIIA liquids	Bottom of footing → top of wall	Surcharge or impounding Class I, II or IIIA liquids removes the 105.2 exemption.	IBC 2024 §105.2 Building item 4; §1807.2; §1015.2
California Building Code 2025	4 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or IIIA liquids	Bottom of footing → top of wall	Surcharge or impounding Class I, II or IIIA liquids removes the exemption.	2025 California Building Code §105.2 Building item 4
California Residential Code R105.2	4 ft, unless supporting a surcharge	Bottom of footing → top of wall	Surcharge removes the exemption at any height.	California Residential Code R105.2 Building item 3 (2022 edition as published)

Model language and state adoptions retrieved 5 September 2026. California’s building and residential codes are listed separately because they are the adopted state models that cities then amend.

19 cities and counties

Jurisdiction	ST	Permit height	Measured from	vs IRC	Surcharge / extra trigger	Source
Florida Building Code, Residential, 8th Ed. (2023)	FL	Permit exemptions are local — see Charlotte County row. FBC-Building 105.2 as published on ICC opens with gas, mechanical and plumbing; we did not treat that as a statewide 4-ft permit law.	Unbalanced backfill	Height not stated in the page we retrieved	Additional lateral loads (the 24-in clause) include surcharge. Permit administration is county-level under F.S. 553.73.	Source
North Carolina Residential Code 2024	NC	Engineering (and therefore permitting of those walls) at 5 ft of unbalanced backfill — not the IRC’s 4 ft / 48 in	Unbalanced backfill	Looser than the model	Property-line walls are engineered at any height. Tiers are summed inside 15 ft. Building-support walls are out of this page’s landscape scope — they are a foundation condition.	Source
Phoenix, AZ	AZ	3 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or III-A liquids	Top of footing → top of wall	Stricter than the model	Surcharge includes a house, building, road, swimming pool, or a fence on the wall or within 3 ft horizontally of the uphill side. Hillsides and preservation locations are site-specific and “may not follow these guidel…	Source
Tucson, AZ	AZ	Not stated as a 4-ft number on the PDSD exemptions page we retrieved	Not stated / other	Height not stated in the page we retrieved	Not stated as a surcharge clause on the exemptions page. Holding back soil is itself the trigger for treating the wall as a retaining wall.	Source
Los Angeles, CA	CA	4 ft in the standard LADBS figure, with conditions that take the exemption away	Bottom of footing → top of wall	4 ft plus extra triggers	P/BC 2026-002: no permit for Figure 1 only. Permit required for Figure 2 and Figure 3 (slough wall). Figure 1 is not allowed where the existing slope below or beneath the wall is steeper than 1 vertical to 5 horizonta…	Source
San Diego, CA (city)	CA	Over 3 ft, or any of five other listed conditions	Top of footing → top of wall	Stricter than the model	Permit required if: (1) over 3 ft; (2) sloping backfill steeper than 1.5:1; (3) surcharge (driveways, walkways, structure footings, fences); (4) impounds flammable liquids; (5) tiered walls whose combined height from …	Source
San Diego County, CA (unincorporated)	CA	Walls that retain not over 3 ft of soil, with four other conditions all true	Top of footing → top of wall	Stricter than the model	Exemption (County Code 91.1.105.2 building item 7): retains not over 3 ft of soil, not more than 6 ft total height, level backfill, no other structures within 6 ft, and not supporting a surcharge or impounding flammab…	Source
Menlo Park, CA	CA	2 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or III liquids	Top of footing → top of wall	Stricter than the model	Surcharge or impounding Class I, II or III liquids removes the 2-ft exemption.	Source
Seattle, WA	WA	4 ft, and two other conditions must also be true	Bottom of footing → top of wall	4 ft plus extra triggers	No construction permit only if all three: (1) 4 ft or lower from bottom of footing to top; (2) the parcel has no Environmentally Critical Area; (3) the wall will not damage adjoining properties or structures. A wall a…	Source
Pierce County, WA	WA	4 ft without surcharge; 2 ft with surcharge	Bottom of footing → top of wall	Stricter than the model	Technical bulletin (2021 International Codes): walls over 4 ft (with or without surcharge) and walls over 2 ft that support a surcharge require permitting per IRC R105 and R404.4. Surcharge within a 45-degree angle of…	Source
Portland, OR	OR	Over 4 ft, or any surcharge — including an ascending slope steeper than 3:1	Bottom of footing → top of wall	4 ft plus extra triggers	Title 24.10.072 B.2: retaining walls not over 4 ft are exempt except where the wall supports ascending slopes exceeding 3:1 or supports a nonsoil surcharge. Brochure 3: a wall is “affected by the weight of a slope” if…	Source
Austin, TX	TX	4 ft, unless surcharge or located in a flood hazard	Bottom of footing → top of wall	4 ft plus extra triggers	Residential R105.2 item 3: unless supporting a surcharge or located within a flood hazard. Commercial 105.2 item 4 adds Class I, II or IIIA liquids and repeats the flood-hazard bar.	Source
Houston, TX	TX	4 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or IIIA liquids	Bottom of footing → top of wall	Matches the model 4 ft	Surcharge or impounding Class I, II or IIIA liquids removes the exemption.	Source
San Antonio, TX	TX	4 ft or less all along its length, unless surcharge or Class I, II or IIIA liquids — measured from grade at the front, not from the footing	Exposed face / grade to grade	Same number, different measuring point	Sloping retained soil steeper than 3:1; building foundations, parking, roads/driveways, sign/monument footings within 1.5× the exposed height; solid fences attached or directly adjacent (wind). Residential exception: …	Source
Cary, NC	NC	Implements NCRC R404.4: 5 ft unbalanced backfill / 5 ft cumulative within 15 ft	Exposed face / grade to grade	Looser than the model	Tiers: if any point of grade within 15 ft behind the wall is more than 5 ft above grade at the front of the wall base, a design professional and a Cary building permit are required.	Source
Charlotte County, FL	FL	Engineered drawings required if the retaining wall is more than 4 ft	Not stated / other	Matches the model 4 ft	Not stated on the residential-wall page. Zoning height and location still apply; contact Zoning.	Source
New York City, NY	NY	Less than 4 ft, no surcharge, no Class I, II or III-A liquids	Top of footing → top of wall	Same number, different measuring point	Any surcharge, or impounding Class I, II or III-A liquids, removes the 1 RCNY 101-14 exemption.	Source
Denver, CO (zoning permit)	CO	Zoning permit for new retaining walls over 12 in, with landmark exceptions	Not stated / other	Stricter than the model	Not stated in the zoning interpretation.	Source
Douglas County, CO	CO	Over 4 ft, or any surcharge; tiers over 4 ft or spaced less than 2× the lower wall	Bottom of footing → top of wall	4 ft plus extra triggers	Surcharges listed: sloping retained soil, structure footings, vehicle loads, nearby structures, stockpiled materials, patios, swimming pools, driveways. Guideline: keep surcharge objects at least twice the total wall …	Source

Municipal and county pages retrieved 5 September 2026. Ellipses are a display limit. The full surcharge and engineering text is in the dataset module and in the linked source. “Not stated” is a gap in the page we retrieved, not a 4-foot guess.

San Diego, CA (city) and San Diego County, CA (unincorporated) are not the same 3-ft rule. Do not copy one onto the other. A grading permit, where adopted (IRC Appendix J), does not include the wall structure.

What to take to the building department

Ask how they measure
Bottom of footing, top of footing, exposed face, or unbalanced fill. The same wall is a different height in Phoenix and in the IRC.
Describe the surcharge
Slope above, driveway, parking, pool, fence on top, another wall uphill, floodplain, critical area, property line. Those are the clauses that remove the exemption at any height in some of these cities.
Ask whether grading is a second permit
Houston, North Carolina and Seattle all run a grading path that does not swallow the wall permit. An exemption from one is not an exemption from the other.
If it retains the house, stop using this page
A wall that undercuts a footing or holds a building is a foundation condition. It is not a landscape retaining wall. That is a different drawing and a different trade.
Do not design from a blog rate or a 4-foot rule of thumb
Above the local threshold, or any surcharge, the next step is an engineer or a contractor who will pull the permit. This table is the question, not the section.

Method and limitations

Source
Each row is a code section, information bulletin or department page we opened on 5 September 2026, stored with the URL. Model IRC/IBC rows are the baseline cities amend.
This is not every city
Coverage is 19 places plus 4 model or state-model rows, concentrated on TX, AZ, WA, CA, OR, FL and NC. A missing city is not a 4-foot city.
“Not stated” is not 4 feet
Where the published exemptions page did not print a height, we stored null. We did not fill the model number in.
Codes move
North Carolina already changed 4 feet to 5 feet of unbalanced fill between the 2018 and 2024 residential codes. Re-check the department before you treat a row as current.

Questions

Do I need a permit for a retaining wall?

It depends on the city, the measuring point, and whether the wall supports a surcharge. The IRC model exempts walls not over 4 feet from the bottom of the footing, unless supporting a surcharge. Phoenix uses 3 feet from the top of the footing. Menlo Park uses 2 feet. Pierce County permits a wall over 2 feet that supports a surcharge. Confirm with the building department. This is not legal advice.

Is there a national 4-foot retaining-wall law?

No. Four feet is the IRC/IBC model exemption. Cities adopt an edition, amend the number, change how height is measured, or add flood, hillside and critical-area overlays. Treating the model as “the law” is the error this table exists to document.

What is a surcharge on a retaining wall?

Anything that adds lateral load besides the soil immediately behind the wall: a slope above, a driveway, a parking pad, a pool, a fence on top, another wall uphill. Some cities also treat a property line, a flood hazard or an environmentally critical area as a condition that removes the exemption.

Does a 3-foot wall need a permit?

In Phoenix, often yes — 3 feet is the exemption, measured from the top of the footing, and surcharge removes it. In an IRC city measuring from the bottom of the footing, a 3-foot exposed face on a deep footing can already be a 4-foot wall. In Pierce County, a 3-foot wall with a driveway behind it is a permit wall. The number without the measuring point is not an answer.

Do tiered retaining walls count as one wall?

Sometimes. North Carolina’s 2024 residential code sums cumulative vertical relief inside 15 feet horizontally. Two 3-foot walls that together make 6 feet of relief are the engineered case, not two exempt walls. Ask the department how it treats tiers.

The wall holds up part of the house. Is this the right page?

No. A wall that retains or bears on a house foundation, or undercuts a footing, is a foundation condition. This page is freestanding landscape walls. That work needs a different drawing and a different trade.

Does HyreYard build retaining walls?

No. HyreYard is an information and matching layer. The retaining-wall calculator on this site is face area times a rate you type. Height is a local permit question, which is this page.

Written and audited by

HyreYard Research

Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking

We are a research desk, not a landscaping company. We read the statute, the municipal code, the water-district rule or the federal soil file ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it. Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. This programme is new. The counts below are what we can already stand behind — a seven-state roster and a rule that we will not make a national claim from it.

10: studies published
50: states in the licensing and HOA tables
7: states the contractor roster is titled to
0: national claims drawn from our own store

How this desk works

Primary sources only. A rule comes from the statute, ordinance, board or agency that issued it, cited by section, with the URL and the retrieval date. We do not cite a blog that cites a code.
Coverage is a number, not a vibe. A table titled to fifty states has fifty sourced rows. A table of cities is titled to the cities we actually read. Gaps are published as gaps.
Store-based facts stay inside the seven states. Texas, Arizona, Washington, California, Oregon, Florida and North Carolina. Texas is the largest roster on the weakest evidence — a self-reported NAICS sales-tax permit — because Texas licenses no landscaper. National claims rest on federal or state agency data, never on our counts.
Fact, calculation, analysis and recommendation stay labelled. "According to…" is a source. "HyreYard analysed… and calculated…" is ours. "This suggests…" is interpretation. We do not present our reading as something the source stated.
We do not landscape, irrigate, treat pests or pull permits, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favourable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.

Data as of Codes and bulletins retrieved 5 September 2026. Authorship on this site is organisational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.

Sources & retrieval dates

IRC 2024 (model code) , IRC 2024 R105.2 Building item 3; R404.4; R312.1.1. 4 ft, unless supporting a surcharge. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
IBC 2024 (model code) , IBC 2024 §105.2 Building item 4; §1807.2; §1015.2. 4 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or IIIA liquids. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
California Building Code 2025 , 2025 California Building Code §105.2 Building item 4. 4 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or IIIA liquids. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
California Residential Code R105.2 , California Residential Code R105.2 Building item 3 (2022 edition as published). 4 ft, unless supporting a surcharge. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Florida Building Code, Residential, 8th Ed. (2023) , 2023 FBC-Residential R404.4; FBC-Building Appendix J103.1. Permit exemptions are local — see Charlotte County row. FBC-Building 105.2 as published on ICC opens with gas, mechanical and plumbing; we did not treat that as a statewide 4-ft permit law.. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
North Carolina Residential Code 2024 , 2024 NCRC R404.4; R101.2.2 (retaining walls are listed accessory structures). Engineering (and therefore permitting of those walls) at 5 ft of unbalanced backfill — not the IRC’s 4 ft / 48 in. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Phoenix, AZ , Phoenix Building Construction Code Admin. 105.2.2; TRT/DOC/00181 (rev. July 2013, still the published guideline). 3 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or III-A liquids. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Tucson, AZ , City of Tucson PDSD, “Do I Need a Permit? (Exemptions)” — Fence & Wall Construction; Residential Permits. Not stated as a 4-ft number on the PDSD exemptions page we retrieved. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Los Angeles, CA , LADBS Information Bulletin P/BC 2026-002 (eff. 1 Jan 2026, rev. 26 May 2026), referencing LABC 101.5 item 4. 4 ft in the standard LADBS figure, with conditions that take the exemption away. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
San Diego, CA (city) , City of San Diego Information Bulletin 220 (Oct 2024); Information Bulletin 221 (Dec 2023); SDMC §142.0340. Over 3 ft, or any of five other listed conditions. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
San Diego County, CA (unincorporated) , County of San Diego Code §91.1.105.2(a)(7); PDS-084; PDS-308. Walls that retain not over 3 ft of soil, with four other conditions all true. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Menlo Park, CA , Menlo Park Municipal Code Ch. 12.06, amending CBC §105.2 Building item 4. 2 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or III liquids. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Seattle, WA , Seattle SDCI, “Retaining Walls & Rockeries”; Tip 321; Tip 502. 4 ft, and two other conditions must also be true. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Pierce County, WA , Pierce County Planning & Public Works, “Residential Retaining Walls Permits and Exceptions,” rev. 26 Mar 2024 (2021 International Codes). 4 ft without surcharge; 2 ft with surcharge. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Portland, OR , Portland City Code 24.10.072 B.2, 24.70.020 C, 24.70.085; Portland Permitting & Development retaining-wall page; Brochure 3. Over 4 ft, or any surcharge — including an ascending slope steeper than 3:1. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Austin, TX , City of Austin, Work Exempt from Building Permits — Residential item 3, Commercial item 4 (2024 IRC / IBC as amended, Chapter 25-12). 4 ft, unless surcharge or located in a flood hazard. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Houston, TX , City of Houston amendments to IBC 105.2 Building item 4; Houston Building Code Appendix J103.1. 4 ft, unless surcharge or Class I, II or IIIA liquids. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
San Antonio, TX , City of San Antonio Development Services, Information Bulletin 171 (rev. March 2026); City Code §10-6(e). 4 ft or less all along its length, unless surcharge or Class I, II or IIIA liquids — measured from grade at the front, not from the footing. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Cary, NC , Town of Cary, retaining-wall permit handout implementing 2024 NCRC R404.4. Implements NCRC R404.4: 5 ft unbalanced backfill / 5 ft cumulative within 15 ft. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Charlotte County, FL , Charlotte County Community Development, Residential Wall Exterior permit page. Engineered drawings required if the retaining wall is more than 4 ft. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
New York City, NY , 1 RCNY §101-14 Table 2, I.1; NYC DOB “Project Requirements for Owner — Shoring… and Ground Structures”; 1 RCNY §103-09 (LL37 height). Less than 4 ft, no surcharge, no Class I, II or III-A liquids. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Denver, CO (zoning permit) , Denver Zoning Code §12.4.1.2.E interpretation (draft 21 May 2026, published by CPD). Zoning permit for new retaining walls over 12 in, with landmark exceptions. Retrieved 5 September 2026.
Douglas County, CO , Douglas County Building Division, Retaining Wall permit page. Over 4 ft, or any surcharge; tiers over 4 ft or spaced less than 2× the lower wall. Retrieved 5 September 2026.

Price the face. Ask the city about the height.

HyreYard does not build walls. The calculator will put face area and a drainage line on the same page as the bid. This table is the permit question the bid has to survive.

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This page is general information about adopted codes and department pages, retrieved on the dates shown. It is not legal advice, is not a structural design, and is not a determination about any named lot. HyreYard does not perform landscaping, engineering or permit work. Walls retaining or bearing on a house foundation are out of scope.