Dry stacking is a traditional form of building still popular today in many different cultures and locations.
Dry stack stone wall construction.
Building a dry stacked stone wall in your garden area is an easy way to incorporate dimension and architecture into the existing landscaping.
And i love rock walls.
The stability of dry stack stone walls comes from interlocking stones and compressional force rather than a mortar so the strength shape and size of the building stones is a key to the durability of the final product.
Dry stone sometimes called drystack or in scotland drystane is a building method by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together.
Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction method which is characterized by the presence of a load bearing façade of carefully selected interlocking stones.
Here are the basic steps involved in building a dry stack stone wall.
Draw the wall to scale and measure the length and height.
Dig a ditch the length of the wall that is about a foot wide and 8 to 12 inches 20 5 cm 30 5 cm below the ground level.
Keep the largest ones nearest the wall to aid building.
Make your wall siting height.
As a result larger losses in prestressing force is probable for dry stack masonry.
Hands on techniques for building a dry stone wall stripping out.
How to build a natural dry stacked stone free standing or retaining rock wall.
Try to cut the ditch into native soil rather than loose added soil as the former provides a more stable foundation for the wall.
Take out the main stones and put the top ones furthest from the wall.
This ditch will act as the wall s footing and prevent the rocks from sliding forward due to pressure from the earth behind.
Higher walls should be engineered for stability.
When putting your wall together mix the stone sizes throughout the wall rather than using only large stones at the bottom and small toward the top.
Sort out the coping stones from the collapsed wall first and place them two to three metres from the wall.
Big small retaining free standing.
Each layer of a dry stack wall is called a course.
How to build a dry stack stone wall.
It sincerely breaks my heart every time i see a wall built with stone blocks courtesy of big box stores inspired by diy cable tv.
Dry stack walls with surface bonding develop their strength through the tensile strength of small fiberglass fibers in the 1 8 3 8mm thick troweled or surface bonded cement plaster coating astm c 887 ref.
Even if you don t plan to sit on your wall 3 feet is about as high as i would recommend building any dry stacked wall.