Natural retaining wall stone9/12/2023 Every other course should contain stones that go the full depth of the wall and connect into the back-fill area – this are called Tie Stones as they tie the wall to the earth it’s retaining. You can use this to chip sections off, create angled corners and shape the wall face in general. To aid shaping you may want to use a stone chisel. You should always be looking to create contact between the stones as you lay and try to select stones that sit tightly on one another. Use larger stones in the lower section and be sure to use small pieces to wedge or angle your courses. Roughly following the structure of the wall in the diagram start laying onto of your tamped gravel leaving room behind to back fill the wall with soil/gravel and rubble at the end. You’ll also need to save some nice looking level topped stones to be your capping stones. Also keep an eye out for deep/long stones as these can become your ‘deadman’ courses. Sort the medium sized stones together as they will form the upper courses of the wall. When building a dry stone wall you want as much contact between the stones as possible as this provides strength. Group the smaller pieces together – these will be used to fill in gaps where stones don’t touch or are at the wrong angle. Many of our clients actually complain about the small pieces of walling you will receive in our deliveries but these are a vital part of the process. The largest and flattest stones you’ll want to group together for the base and the lower parts of the wall. Sort Your StonesĪfter obtaining your walling stone you’ll need to sort through them so that you’re nice and organised for the building phase. Your digging ideally needs to be deep enough to have a course or two of the Purbeck Random Walling in the ground – bear this in mind as you dig. Be sure to lay landscaping fabric under your gravel base (like in the diagram) to prevent the gravel from travelling into the mud or substrate. Dig down enough so that you can create a base of tamped gravel that is 6 inches or so deep. Refer to it throughout this guide to help you understand what’s required to make a dry stone retaining wall that will last and look fantastic too! You Don’t Need Foundations But You’ll Need to Dig A LittleĪlthough dry stone walls do not need foundations or mortar you will need to dig a little to get the best stability possible. We always think projects like this need to start with a diagram – we’ve created the above to help with your walling plans. So, you need to retain some ground and you’d like some lovely looking Purbeck Walling to be the face of this new retained area – well let’s get into how to make this happen for your project. How to build a natural stone retaining wall Our advice in this article can be applied to either type of dry walling but we’re going to focus on Purbeck Walling Stone in this piece as it’s local to us and we’re suckers for a bit of local produce! In this piece we’re going to discuss how you can quickly build a retaining wall in your own garden without the need for foundations and show you some examples of some beautiful projects to get you inspired to try a project of your own. Here at Miles Stone we have a couple of types of walling stone that are suitable for this application our York Thin Walling and Purbeck Random Walling Stone being the most suited. If you want a retaining wall that will be there long after all of us then stone is the way to go. The huge benefit stone has over a material like timber railway sleepers is that it does not degrade over time. Over 3000 years later natural stone dry walls are still a very effective and attractive way to quickly create borders, manage level changes or retain soil and areas of ground. The use of stone laid dry to create walls and boundaries is so old that it is thought that the earliest examples in the UK were built in the Bronze Age - roughly 1600AD! If you’ve ever done any walking in the countryside of the UK you will probably have seen your share of dry stone walls.
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