TL;DR
A boulder wall is a retaining or landscape wall built from large natural stones, typically 12 to 36 inches, stacked with a batter, a backward lean of 1 to 2 inches per foot of height, on a compacted gravel footing so gravity and interlock hold the slope. Construction quality lives in the unseen parts: the embedded base course, clean crushed-stone backfill, and drainage behind the face that relieves water pressure.
What it means
A boulder wall is a retaining or landscape wall built from large natural stones, typically 12 to 36 inches, stacked with a batter, a backward lean of 1 to 2 inches per foot of height, on a compacted gravel footing so gravity and interlock hold the slope. Construction quality lives in the unseen parts: the embedded base course, clean crushed-stone backfill, and drainage behind the face that relieves water pressure. Machine placement is standard above small sizes, since individual stones run hundreds to thousands of pounds. Most jurisdictions require an engineered design once any retaining wall exceeds 3 to 4 feet of retained height.
Where it sits in the glossary
Boulder wall is part of the Trade jargon group inside the ProFix Directory glossary. Browse every term in this category from the glossary index.
Why Ohio homeowners should know it
This is a term Ohio homeowners encounter when reading contractor quotes, hiring paperwork, or inspection reports. Understanding it well enough to ask one good follow-up question is usually all the protection a homeowner needs.
ProFix Directory keeps definitions short on the index page and saves the longer context — Ohio-specific rules, where the term comes from, and which ProFix tools touch it — for these per-term pages so the term is easy to cite and easy to share.
ProFix tools that touch this term
See also
License: CC-BY-4.0 — quote freely with attribution to ProFix Editorial Team / ProFix Directory.