The wall
Start from a common residential wall, then replace length and height with the job you actually walked.
Height, drainage, and extras
Height multiplies face labor. Drain stone grows with face area. Geogrid layers and engineer fees are a step, not a foot. Corners are extra cuts that do not get cheaper on a short wall.
Your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance, and paid time off. Matching a cheaper per-foot quote after leaving it out is how a sold job becomes a loss.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the homeowner — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Your bid
- Wall size
- Face area
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Block, cap, stone, grid, pipe
- Engineer, permit, travel
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit
- Price per linear foot
- Price per face sq ft
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
- Walk-away per foot
Where the cost goes
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. Wall-type factors, height factors, and extras are common ballpark starting points, not an industry standard, a benchmark, an engineered design, or a guarantee. Time your own crews and replace them.
Common questions
Why does a per-linear-foot price for a retaining wall go wrong?
Because almost nothing in a wall is priced by the foot. Face material is bought by the square foot of face, which is length × (exposed height + embedment). Drain stone is a volume behind the wall. Geogrid is square yards per layer, and taller walls need more layers. An engineer stamp and a permit arrive as a step, not a foot. A 40 ft wall at 3 ft and a 40 ft wall at 6 ft are the same linear feet and roughly double the face, more than double the stone, and two geogrid layers apart.
Why is buried height counted when the customer only sees the exposed part?
Because you still build it. Embedment — the course or so below grade that keeps the wall from kicking out — is block you buy, set, and backfill, and it is invisible in the height the homeowner quotes back at you. Face area here is length × (exposed + embedment) for exactly that reason. The cap, by contrast, really is per foot of length, so it is priced that way.
How many geogrid layers does a wall need?
The starting count here is: none under 4 ft exposed, one layer at 4 ft, and one more for every additional 2 ft. So a 6 ft wall starts at two layers and an 8 ft wall at three. That is a starting count for pricing, not a design — actual reinforcement depends on the soil, the surcharge, the block, and the manufacturer's tables, and above about 4 ft that is an engineer's determination, not a calculator's. Each layer costs square yards of grid across the wall length at the depth it runs back, plus the labor to place it.
When does an engineer or a permit enter the price?
Many US jurisdictions treat roughly 4 ft of exposed height as the line, which is why the options here are none, permit only (starting around $250), and engineer stamp plus permit (starting around $1,800). Those are starting figures to replace with your own, and the threshold is a common pattern rather than a rule — confirm it with your building department for the specific site before you quote. Getting this wrong is the single most expensive omission in a wall bid, because it is thousands of dollars that no per-foot number contains.
How does the wall type change the labor?
It multiplies face hours: segmental block is the 1.0 baseline, timber or sleeper 0.9, boulder or natural stone 1.3, and poured formed concrete 1.4. Height multiplies face hours again — 1.0 for a garden wall under 3 ft, 1.1 for 3–4 ft, 1.25 for 4–6 ft, and 1.45 above that — because taller walls mean more lifts, more compaction, and often a machine at the face. Excavation, drainage, and corners stay separate: the excavator shows up once whatever the wall's height, and the drain pipe still runs the length.
Why isn't a 25% margin the same as adding 25% to my cost?
Margin here is a share of the final price — price = job cost ÷ (1 − margin) — which is how the quote reads to the customer and how your books read it. Overhead is a separate markup on direct cost, applied before margin and never to itself or to profit. A $9,000 cost marked up 25% is $11,250, a 20% margin; a 25% target margin is $12,000. Everything stays in this browser: no account, no upload, and the optional local counter records only which features were used and the day.