Can you make ALL of the area drain toward left? If you slope from AC toward door, where will that water go? I think you want all the drainage to go left so nothing is trapped and puddling. There is no apparent place of lower elevation, except left, in the picture where you could run water TO, either by pipe or grade, in order to get rid of it. (I'm taking your word for it that left is of lower elevation as it isn't obvious in the pic.) If you remove the retaining wall and create slope instead, you'll be adding water to the paved area before it drains away. This doesn't seem ideal.

The apparent reason for the water puddle is sinking after install or sloppy leveling at install of paver patio. When I ran the level lines I was so surprised at the amount of grade to work with that I went out the following day to double check.

It's hard to see the slope as the entire street goes downhill.

Prior to any changes, the same garden areas sloped downward towards the patio, to the right of the air conditioner - 5" and adjacent to the 4 x4's stars with a 5" decrease in height from the air conditioner and ends up with 16", getting steeper to the right of the air conditioner. It benefits from the entire area being sloped.

I would be making the slope steeper from the air conditioner to the door and patio, keeping a lesser slope from the right of the air conditioner to the end of the photo, due to the entire area being sloped... If I managed to state that correctly.

You expressed my fears, was hoping to find a solution. From measurements I drew to scale a representation of the profile of the existing soil level against the building. I had trouble uploading it even though its a jpeg. It shows small.

the outer edge of the brick walkway / patio is 7 inches lower than the slab at the door.

It sounds like you're saying that there is continuous slope downward from the door. If that's the case, as long as you fix the puddling depression, the walk will drain. I'm saying not to create too much slope of the soil alongside and aiming toward the walk, as it will slowly but continuously dump soil onto the walk, creating the never-ending clean-up chore. The retaining wall solution I've shown above, being more or less a level, elevated area of soil, is probably the best solution because it doesn't aim any washing soil toward the walk. Water that doesn't permeate the ground escapes toward the left, in sync with the overall flow of drainage. The downside is that it requires a fair amount of wall material. (BTW, porches and decks are MORE OR LESS level, but they actually have a minute slope in order to drain. The elevated area captured by the retaining wall would be similar. Excess water must have a way out.

A solution that uses a little less material is one similar to that shown in the picture below. Instead of the wall footprint having a final "leg" that returns toward the building, it would end with the the "leg" parallel to the longest walk and would slope downward so as to terminate flush with the grade. Overall, this does not motivate water to travel quite as far leftward, keeping it longer in the lawn such that it is "cleaned" before arriving at the longest walk. But it would work, probably adequately for the situation. I know all that may be confusing and I hope the drawing helps clarify it.

Could not add pic. Houzz must be messing with the system. Will do it later.

Yardvaark, thank you. You understand the situation correctly. the slope is accurately depicted in my drawing. It is fairly consistent.

I look forward to seeing your drawing. I was able to use Houzz Photo

April

Have tried to upload pics for several threads only to get the eternal spinning circle. Have tried another browser with no improvement. I see others uploading photos so conclude it is an issue with my computer. No telling when that could be fixed.

I'll try to describe what I was talking about. If you refer to the drawing I did earlier that you uploaded above, begin where the retaining wall connects to the building. The first leg would be level. The second leg would be level or somewhat sloping. The third leg would slope such that it terminated at grade. There would be no fourth or fifth leg.

Yardvaark, others on several forums have comments on photo upload difficulties, so not just you. There's also an issue with the search function, so I assume that Houzz has been messing with the website coding.

NHB, thanks for the news. It gives me hope as I have no other idea how to fix.

I had to upload the photo to my ideabook, and then get it to the forum using Houzz Photo rather than Photo. Yardvaark, you may not be happy with how that clutters up your ideabooks!

I believe I understand. Thank you. I would still dig, backfill and include a drainage pipe...

It would be like Houzz ... trying to manipulate people into using ideabooks. I will look into it.

I presume you are talking about draining the back of the wall ...? Then, yes. See Google Images for retaining wall details.

Picture management less convenient but not horrible so I will go with it for now.

hope the photo feature id fixed soon. Thank you Yardvaark. That helps a lot.