Stone
Dry-stack moves with the ground. That is the whole trick.
A mortared wall in this soil cracks, because the ground here freezes and lifts and a rigid wall has nowhere to put that. A dry-stack wall takes the same movement and settles. It is older, cheaper, and it outlasts the thing people usually ask for instead.
Dry-stack basalt wall
$95 a face foot
No mortar, no footing, and it moves with the ground instead of cracking. Up to about three feet without engineering.
Our mason has been laying this in the valley for twenty-two years and it is the reason people ring us rather than a landscaper with a wall guy.
Mortared basalt wall
$150 a face foot
Where a wall has to hold soil or carry a rail. Footing, drainage, and a permit over four feet.
Over four feet this needs an engineer's stamp and we will not build it without one. That is a real cost and it goes in the quote, not on top of it.
Flagstone patio or path
$28 a square foot
Set on compacted road base with sand joints or planted joints. Not on concrete.
Dry creek bed
$40 a linear foot
Graded to take roof and driveway runoff somewhere useful. Half of these are drainage jobs that happen to look good.
Basalt steps
$420 a step
Solid slabs, quarried locally, set on gravel. They weigh what they weigh and they do not move.
Rates are a starting point and every one of them moves with access. A wall a wheelbarrow can reach and a wall that needs stone carried through a house are not the same job, and the quote says which one yours is.
Over four feet, a wall needs an engineer.
That is a stamped drawing and a permit, and it is a real cost — usually between eight hundred and two thousand dollars depending on what is behind the wall. It goes in the quote as its own line rather than appearing after you have agreed to everything else. We will not build one without it, and anybody who offers to is offering you a wall you cannot insure.