I have been busy on other things this week and not had a lot of time to work on the wall in the courtyard. However, I did get a couple of hours on it today, in between showers. Unfortunately, I have had to cover today’s work with hessian to prevent rain running down the front of the stones and washing the cement out.
Today’s work is covered in hessian to protect it from the rain. With the weather, we only got a couple of hours to work on it today.
We have made some good progress on the reclaimed stone wall in the courtyard. We have being making the best of the recent fine weather – it is October next week and I can’t believe that this good weather is going to last.
There is still a lot to do!
We have spent a bit of time on the wall in the garden this weekend. It was really only two half days, but we made some good progress.
When I looked at the photographs of yesterday’s work on the reclaimed stone wall, I realised that it wasn’t great – the courses were just to muddled up.
There was no alternative other than to take it apart and redo it. The sand and cement that I used to backbed the stones was still soft, so it didn’t take long to take it apart – just a quick tap with a hammer does the trick. If I hadn’t rebuilt it, it would have bugged me for years. It seemed a worthwhile investment of an hour or so to rebuilt that part.
The reason for the poorly built wall? A sprained ankle. I fell over the previous evening coming out of the pub (not because of too much beer, but a pothole in the road – honest!) and sprained my ankle. The next day I was hobbling around. This meant that I didn’t stand back and look at the wall frequently enough while I was building it. I only looked at it at the end of the day and probably only looked at it properly until I photographed it. Then it was too late.
Looking at today’s photos, I am much happy. It looks much better – not perfect, but better.
All in all, three days work – including an hour or so to redo half a dozen courses that I wasn’t happy with.
Well, I looked at the photographs from yesterday and I really didn’t like the part of the wall to camera right. There was no alternative but to take it down and redo it. It took an hour to take it down and rebuild it.
I have spent the last couple of days building a reclaimed stone wall in front of the retaining wall in the garden. This is the first set of stone that we have imported to the site. Much of the existing stone on site is poor and unfortunately the quality of a wall depends on the quality of the stone used to build it.
The stones are “back bedded” meaning that a small amount of sand and cement is used at the back of the stones to hold them in place. It also is required to attach the front wall to the retaining wall using the stainless steel ties.
It has taken a couple of days to complete this part of the wall. The stones come in large bags and need to be “coursed out” – sorted into groups depending on their height. The stones are sorted into groups of 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9cms. The larger stones are almost all 15 or 16cms high. While it takes time to course the stones, it does make building the wall that much quicker – as soon as you know you have enough of one course, you can get on and cement the stones in place.
This is the reclaimed stone wall that has been built in front of the retaining wall in the courtyard garden.
The wall is made of reclaimed stone. We are using two sizes of stones 3 – 3.5 and 6 – 6.5. The larger stones are used as “jumpers” to break up the courses and make it less uniform.
This shows how the reclaimed stone wall has been tied into the retaining block wall. The ties are made of stainless steel.
If it rains over night, the rain may wash some of the cement down the front of the stones. This would cause marks and can be avoided by covering the newly built wall with a large piece of hessian.
The concrete base and retaining walls are now finished in the sunken garden. The blockwork will have a dry stone wall at the front. We have bought some reclaimed stone for this purpose. It is already coursed out – bags of 6 inch high stones and bags of 3 inch stones. This allows us to break up the courses when building a wall – we will put in some 6 inch stones at random. I built a small amount of test wall to make sure that it looks ok. It is difficult to tell from such a small section, but I am sure it will look fine.
The dry stone wall will be back bedded – a small amount of mortar is used on the back of each stone to hold them in position. Using mortar also allows us to cement in the metal (stainless steel) ties that have been left protruding from the retaining wall.
There are going to be 2 terraces in the courtyard garden. The white bags to picture right are full of reclaimed stone for the dry stone wall that will stand in front of the blockwork.
The dry stone walling stone has arrived. It has come in around 10 one tonne bags. These are easily lifted into position with the telehandler.
The soakaway is actaully a 15ft deep hole filled with clean rubble at the base. The rubble is covered with Visqueen (plastic) that stops fine dirt and earth from washing in and blocking up the drain.
The land drain is installed behind the wall at the base. If any water gets caught behind the wall, it drains into the pipe and is then diverted into a soakaway. This stops water building up behind the wall and pushing it over (potentially).
Close up of the land drain that is inserted behind the retaining wall. Any water that gathers behind the retaining wall will seem into this pipe and is then directed away from the house. The pipe eventually feeds into a soakaway – a large hole filled with rubble and then covered back over.
The blockwork retaining wall will have a dry stone wall at the front. The stone will be back bedded and tied into the retaining wall using stainless steel ties. This photo shows what the dry stone wall might look like. We are using local reclaimed stone.
While I have been down in London for the past couple of days, the builders have made good progress with the retaining walls in the sunken garden. The walls are now complete and ready for the dry stone wall to be construct in front of them. Even the stone has arrived on site, so there is no excuse for not getting on with this work.
While I have been down in London for the past 2 days, the builders have started (and finsihed) the retaining walls for the sunken garden.
This blockwork will be largely hidden by a dry stone wall at the front. There are metal ties that enable the dry stone wall to be attached to the blockwork at the back.
The coil of black pipe is a “land drain” that will be inserted behind the wall. The pipe has holes in it allowing water to seep in. This will prevent any water that gathers behind the wall to seep into the pipe and run away into a soak away.
This arrived while I was away in London. There are two bags with 6 inch courses, but the rest is largely 3 inch. This enables us to break up the courses a bit when building the wall.
This is the first stone that we have imported for building dry stone walls. It will be used to face the blockwork in the sunken garden. It is much better than any of the other stone we have been using to build dry stone walls with.
Part of the dry stone wall adjoining the newly rebuilt extension had to be dismantled while it was being rebuilt. However, now the building work is complete we can repair the wall. It also makes the site a little more secure since it was relatively easy to get through the wall from the road side.
I have run a piece of damp course down the wall where the dry stone wall meets the building. I have only run this above the level of the damp course in the building. This should help prevent any damp transferring from the dry stone wall to the building above the internal damp course level.
I have tried to use black faced stones wherever I can so that the repair matches the rest of the wall. We have been largely successful at achieving this except for some of the coping stones. If I find some black faced coping stones, I might swap these for the ones we installed today. Since the coping stones are the top course, this is easily done. For now, the job is complete.
Part of the dry stone wall adjoining the rebuilt extension had to be taken down while it was being rebuilt. Now this corner has been repointed the wall can be rebuilt. First job is to clear the weeds and remove the loose stone.
Having cleared the weeds low down, the wall is rebuilt. Avoiding taking too much of it apart. I tend to just dismantle the wall until we reach something solid (and flat).
Almost up to the top course and ready for the coping stones. To reach the top course from this side, it is handy to stand on the back of the pickup.
Now with the coping stones. It only took a couple of hours to complete.
After nearly three weeks of great weather, today it is a litte overcast.
This is the view from the top field looking across the valley – even on an overcast day, it is a great view.
You can see the newly built wall along Hagg Wood (down to the gate with the large white bag).
There are some missing coping stones, but the wall along Hagg Wood is now largely complete.
Although much of the day today was taken up with briefing a kitchen designer (I have high hopes!!), I did manage to spend a couple of hours on the dry stone wall along Hagg Wood today. The corner of the wall is not in the best of shapes. While I have managed to get away with just repairing the top 2-3 courses, this part of the wall needs to be rebuilt. While some of the wall has a bit of a “wiggle”, this part of the wall is just lost to the under growth.
I have tried to keep the amount of rebuilding to a minimum and concentrate more on “repairing”. But with the corner, I have no choice. Yesterday, I spent some time digging out this part of the wall. Today will be spent rebuilding a 4m section. This is in comparison to spending a day repairing a wall when I can do 10-15m in a day.
The yellow string shows where the wall should be. Mmm…there is a bit of work to do here.
There is little option but to dissamble the corner of the wall and re-building. I tried to keep the amount of rebuilding to a minimum, but it had to be done.
At least it is now straight. It is amazing how much stone goes into the wall when it is rebuilt.
I have to admit that I did take the coping stones off and had a second go as the first attempt had a bit of a “wave” in it. This is not perfect, but better.
I have been working on the wall that lines Hagg Wood today. Down in the bottom corner by the gate. Unfortunately, this wall is in pretty bad shape and the small wall that backs onto the road is pretty precarious.
It took me a while to trim back all of the holly just to be able to get to the road. The soil is much higher here, but a bit of investigation with a pick axe revealed that it was a pile of stones – presumably fallen off the wall – rather than soil. You can see from the picture below that there was a lot of stone hidden under the grass. Clearing the holly and finding the stones took most of the day. The heat (around 30C) was pretty intense and even in the shade it was hard work.
I spent an hour or so at the end of the day and rebuilt the top section on the smaller wall that runs along the road. Although it still bows a bit, it is a lot more solid than before. I did look back through my archive photos and managed to find a picture of the wall before I “fiddled” with it!
There is a little more to dig out tomorrow and then hopefully I can finish this bottom section of wall and move up to the other end of the bottom field.
The wall is in pretty bad shape here, but most of the stone seemed to be buried in the grass!
Apparently, Lurchers don’t do dry stone walling. That is for Jack Russells!
This section of wall was looking pretty precarious. There is still a bit of a bow in it, but the large dodgey stones on the top have been sorted out. Note to self: Make sure you put your steel toe cap boots on before playing with a wall in this state.
I managed to find this photo in my archive and it shows what the wall used to look like.
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