Your accent is awesome :'D one moment your completely German and within the same sentence you transform into pure West cork. I love it. Keep up the good work man.
awesome! I have been thinking a lot about building rock walls lately - feels so familiar - and basic. I'll be in heaven building rock walls and rock cisterns and gardens to the sound of bag pipes and drums. Yeah!
I appreciate the fact that you're not "fussy" with your instructions. I haven't started a wall yet, but it seems to me that it's a good idea to take it slowly and let the stones "tell" me where they want to go!
I'm totally inspired to build my keyhole garden with dry stone after seeing this video! I have lots of rocks on my land...and I can't wait for my next free day to get started. Thank you so much for this YT video! Your work is beautiful.
For customers I usually do not have the time. I just try and get good stone and use that. Mostly different sizes of square stone. Picking out the best capping stones for last. In this video I had to make do with really bad bits and bobs. But it still worked out real fine. The main point is that the wall was not higher than 50 cm. Otherwise if more than that height, I would have had to build two walls and concrete to insure a stable wall. Bad stone means mostly more concrete. Which I don't like.
I can speak German and English. But now my English is better then my German ;) I lost my Welch and it takes about 6 weeks for me to be fluent in German again. Funny how it goes :) David.
I'm doing this project tomorrow !!! Thanks for the tips ! I always thought you needed to build it at an angle. I'm actually REDOING an existing wall that construction men had quickly done while doing my drains. They had used whatever rocks and it's now tumbling down... I'll follow your guidelines.
Cant figure out this guys accent. !!!!! Love facing old out of control boundary walls with stone, and planting perennials. Keeps weeds under control. Nice video, well done.
To be sure there David, you are a man of many talents. I am near 60 now, i enjoy my Gardening, and taking a very keen interest in Dry stone walling, for some gardening ideas i have.
Invest in 3 sledge hammers small medium and big one and 2 chisels flat and pointy. If you are going to have corners start with them. They are the most critical part of the stone wall. Take big flat stones chisel them to rectangular shapes and build them as they were cinder blocks. Tie straight strings from one corner to the other helps build your wall vertical and straight. Take your time placing the stones chose ones that fit or chisel to fit.
Ok thanks for that, that's good to know ;) How old would these walls be. But in this case as the wall is only 60 cm high it should be totally fine ;) If you do build it taller, then as I said, you need to have a proper footer and place it on subsoil. A quick note here for everyone. Make sure that all gap fill is wedged in by the wight of the stones placed above it. This keeps it from dislodging. Cheers David.
Very nice. Thanks for sharing your expertise. I love loose stone walls vs. the ones with mortar. One thing though: Be careful not to pile soil up around the base of your trees because they will eventually die. Once the bark rots off and is eaten away by soil organisms, the tree will die. It may take a few years, but it will happen.
Thank you for your video! I recently moved into a house that has beautiful rock walls all around it. But, they are falling apart. The good news is the missing rocks are still here. I guess they just got knocked off. I wasn't sure how to add them back in, but now I'm going to give it a go. :-) I'm in Colorado.
Hey cheers sorry for the late reply was busy. I would not put the soil all the way through. The weeds will just grow. You would need concrete if the wall is very high and your stones are not square. It is always stronger to use cement as backing. But I like to avoid it when I can. David.
This is lovely, I am blessed with thousands of potato size rocks, I suppose I would have to use some sort of cement product, or wire fencing to give structure.
This is how I make my own walls.... the only difference being, my front faces are not totally vertical and lean back slightly into the bank...for extra stability. I'm totally self-taught....so it's great to see someone else with the same approach. Also, I find the more varied the shapes and sizes of stone...the more pleasing it looks. Having said that....you also need heaps of patience ( & stones)!
Hi David I like your channel very much. Very nice video and wall too. A few tips that I picked up by helping a professional stone mason working in a friends house. Sorry for my English. Lay your stones next to where the wall is going to be build. Close really big ones as foundation further flat ones as top (as you mentioned) in between mix sizes and colors for an aesthetic look . If you are 2 friends working is more productive if one is chiseling the stones a bit and the other is placing them.
This is a retaining wall only, as it is a single wall and only 60 cm high. Double walls up to around 1.5 m high do not need any mortar. They were build to keep livestock in. Traditionally for instance house walls were made with two walls with the base being quite wide and tapering down to around 60 cm under the roof. These were two story houses and many were made with lime and sand as a way of holding them together. They are still around and some are 500 years old. Today we would use cement and not lime as it is way stronger and load bearing in a wall like that is excellent.
Beautiful walls! I didn't know you could use soil as a sort of mortar substitute/fill. I'm making my first dry stone wall as a low bench (about 40cm tall). It's double wall and it's been going well so far. However, I've just got to the top of the wall and looking to cap it off with large stone slabs which will make the bench top. The problem I have is that, since the slabs span maybe 8 stones on that second last level just below, it is really hard to get the weight of that top slab to transfer evenly down into each of the stones in that second last layer. So they are essentially sitting loose. I've been spending a lot of time trying to shim stones in and chip other stones so they're less tall to get the top stone to touch and hold all of the other stones and it feels like I'm not getting anywhere! Could I use soil to create that friction and transfer of weight down? Or would it be too loose to hold...?
I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for working with very large stones that are already in place? I've often built stone walls around very large stones on my property but they are often rounded and not easy to build on/around.
Thanks a lot ! - a a descendant of the builders of Blarney Castle, I feel a certain obligation to make a good and lasting job of the dry stone wall in question - I've picked up a some pointers from your video. Cheers - from New Zealand.
i am wanting to build a 3-4ft dry stone wall to frame and hold back some earth. i was initially going to use a foundation of crushed 3/4" rock and bury my base course in that. my friend who is a structural engineer suggested i use concrete for foundation instead. is there any reason why you wouldnt use concrete?
Hey no prob, I would get half a ton of stones and pick 7 cap stones out wherever you will buy them. A weal barrow of filler stones should do. Hope it works out for you alright. let me know how you get on ;) Best wishes David.
Most of these walls date back to the 18th and 19th centuries when New England was first settled. The land was so rocky the next generations left for literally greener pastures in the Mid-West. The walls remain and many are now used by suburbanites to mark boundary lines. Most walls are about 3 feet (1 metre?) but can be as large as 5 feet. We have considerable heaving during the winter and early spring.
Hi David, Thanks so much for this video. I am trying to build a small stone wall in my front yard, probably the same size as the one you have in this video. I am planning to buy square stones for this and I was wondering if you could tell me what kind of a mix of stones I should purchase depending on the length of the wall. For example, like how many capstones, fillers and so on for about a 7 ft long 2ft tall wall. Thanks in advance.
I was always wondering when I saw them by the roadside how they were built. (Didn't some English ruler give Irish workers something similar to the dole if they did work? I think I remember that from
Look at the profile of El Racó del Bosc, they are artisans working with natural stone, it is an area with more than a thousand years of history, they have gastrotourism experiences.
Awesome video. Thanks. Were you putting soil between the rocks all the way through or just at the back where the bank was? You mentioned cement at one point...Would you recommend cement at all for a bit more stability? Thanks! ~Ontario, Canada
This was exactly what I was looking for! One question- I saw that this was installed around an existing tree. Doesn't the weight of the rock hurt the tree roots? Someone told me I may have that problem with using rock in my garden underneath existing trees.
+Sandra Maria Tree roots will not be damaged or affected by this activity. What is more likely in this video is the tree will grow and move the wall (because he chose to build so close to the tree).
Is there anything wrong with setting the stones in mortar? I'm planning on doing a small wall along a sidewalk with a bunch of river stone that we salvaged from an old koi pond. Since most are round in shape, I figured using some mortar to set the stone would better...but I've never done this before, so I could be totally wrong?
Nothing wrong with using mortar. You just may get a very rounded wall that may look funny with all the very round shapes. The reason is there will be bigger gaps. If you have enough flat rounded stones then that would look good. You could also build a temporary flat supporting wall from straight plywood in front where the face of the wall is to be and mortar them in standing on edge that looks very well too.
I have a pile of rocks/rubble/stone bits in my back garden. Was thinking of what to do and now EUREKA! Will this hold once built? I noticed that these are obviously loose. What holds it together??
helpful video, i just collected lots of big stone today because i watched your video last night and i started my raised stone bed.It's looking great already but unfortunately i'm going to need a hell of a lot more stones and male help because i can't lift all those stones been a petite woman. poor me lol
Here in New England I guess it is more of a problem because of the wide temperature swings between deep freezes of winter and hot, humid weather of summer. Every spring you can ride the roads and see collapsed portions of walls all along the way.
10 лет назад
Hi, and thanks for such a informative film :-) How to cut bigger stones?
I need serious help. How far back do I need to dig to get a level front face for my wall? my wall falls every winter. How do I get it to stay up. I would add the picture, but I'm not that great with social media.
Work With Nature every winter my wall falls down. if I could send you a picture I would. I want to make sure that when I restack it, it stays up. How far back should I dig out to get the brick to sit up straight?
OK so is it a wall that is free standing or is it a retaining wall. You might consider having it lean inwards or if it is free standing wall then build two walls that lean against each other. You will also need to have lots of perpend stones also known as tie stone or bond stones in your walls to hold the wall together. To be honest I do not fully understand your question but am willing to help if I can. David.
