Between our house and the road is our drive, which runs parallel to the un-adopted road about 370 ft up the road until it bends around and joins it.
Between the drive and the road is our wood, each house owns the wood in front of their house and its 60ft deep opposite our house, narrowing to about 20ft where the drive joins the road.
The total length of the wood is about 600ft and it's fronted by a natural grey stone wall where it joins the un-adopted road. The wall is about 2 ft high.
The bit of the wall in front of our house has disappeared - about 60ft long. It was gone long before we purchased the house and I suspect that it was nicked at some point. There are other gaps in the wall.
The wall needs replacing and I can't seem to find a replacement source of natural stone. I keep getting google results for "Marshalls" type stone walling, which is horribly expensive and I think would cost about £4,000 just for materials (20m x 0.5m = 10sqm) - can someone check my maths please I think I would need 5 of these: www.travisperkins.co.uk/walling/marshalls-traditional-stone-walling-pitched-silver-birch-310-x-100-x-70mm/p/670365
(The wall is needed to stop soil erosion on to the pavement which is dangerous and needs regular cleaning.)
Any ideas for a less costly alternative would be appreciated.
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Done some more maths, think its 3.1 of the above - a bit cheaper but still expensive.
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How are you building this wall? Presumably not just a single skin without piers? What's the rest of it like?
I had to replace some brick garden wall. It replaced an old single one that was falling down, and instead of leaving it I stupidly demolished it - it turned out to have belonged to my neighbour!
17m x 1m high cost me c. £4k I should think. About £1600 in bricks, a mixture of red engineers and Kassandra. The brickies, a 3 &1 gang, built it in a day for about £1,000. The rest was the digging out, concrete footing, sand and cement. I had it built double in English garden wall bond with a brick on edge capping. My neighbour paid half in acknowledgement that it is a considerably better wall than the one it replaced. Indian stone is dearer than bricks of course.
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>>How are you building this wall? Presumably not just a single skin without piers? What's the rest of it like?
This is beyond my skill set! I said to the builder - I wanted the wall along this stretch to be replaced and he said he'd do it but we had to chose the materials.
Double thickness is going to more than double the cost - drat.
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Yes, you wouldn't want a single skinned wall by the sounds of it. Hard to say without seeing it, any reason why the builder said they wouldn't suggest materials. I know some don't want to do they can try and avoid any blame.
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>> Double thickness is going to more than double the cost - drat.
> The wall is needed to stop soil erosion on to the pavement
Yup its going to need to be double thickness. In fairness, your builder of choice should choose the suitable construction and should tell you how many metres of materials is needed. You just tell him what stone you want, based on the material cost per metre.
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>>www.travisperkins.co.uk/walling/marshalls-traditional-stone-walling-pitched-silver-birch-310-x-100-x-70mm/p/670365
Looks like a product I have specified in an earlier life. Its made from a coloured concrete, pitch faced, and it doesn't really look like stone. It's a perfectly workmanlike material, but it wouldnt match the rest of your boundaries. Its also not faced on the back side - looks like ordinary concrete blocks.
You will also be pointed at unpleasant bright white, thin copings, which will add to the cheap suburban feeling.
In this neck of the woods, there are many second hand stone merchants, and it should be possible for you to source a reasonable match to the rest of the walls.
If the wall is retaining any ammount of ground, then the rule of thumb is for the wall to be in proportion 4:1 - height : thickness. So if you're retaining 2Ft, then the wall needs to be 6in thick.
HTH
8o)
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Apologies.
Just re-read the Marshalls site, and it is real stone.
Ignore everything but the proportions!
8o(
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Natural stone is likely to be much more expensive than standard coloured concrete or crushed stone blocks.
They will need some real skill to lay as they are not standard sizes and probably little in the way of right angled faces. Look at the costs and time for dry stone walling for which there is reasonable comparison.
If they are retaining possibly waterlogged mud and tree roots they will need proper footings - not just cemented to whatever happens to be there. Any decent builder will want to avoid wall failure in the event of persistent heavy rain.
Finally a comment which may also be appropriate. We have just moved house and have been employing building contractors (builders, plasterers, electricians, Kitchen fitters etc) over the last few months. Day rates are much higher than I anticipated, and their schedules are full.
Builders of proper stone walls may be in a similar position to quote premium rates for what may be 4-6 days work + materials.
Last edited by: VxFan on Tue 2 May 23 at 10:44
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It would actually be quite helpful to see the wall it's trying to match into. If it's a traditional drystone wall that's a different case.
>>They will need some real skill to lay
The Marshalls ones will be thicknessed at the very least but the description implies they are a standard size anyway. They have a 'rough' pitched front, which is a Yorkshire (and elsewhere) thing although the affordable Marshalls sandstone stuff is Indian.
I used Marshalls stone paving which is riven, but thicknessed to 20mm i.e. shoved through something resembling a planer, the supplier chosen mainly on the basis that it is 'ethically sourced' - Indian stone frequently involves child labour.
Depending what it's trying to blend into, Marshalite might be fine. May parents bought a new house in the 60's built mainly with Marshalite including a single thickness garden wall maybe 30" high which is still there and upright! There was however a period in the 70's when some yobbos pushed a couple over for fun.
If a double thickness wall is the answer, the rear leaf could be done in concrete block if it is not on show. It will need some sort of capping or coping. Again perhaps dictated by the appearance of the rest of the wall. I don't like those thin concrete copings myself, which is why we used bricks on edge (on a brick wall).
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Sounds like you need a Krinkle Krankle wall. quite a lot of them round Lymington and Milford-on-Sea. Single skin but very strong due to curving and don’t need support posts along the length, although most have one at the ends to support gates.
Last edited by: DeeW on Mon 1 May 23 at 21:55
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Apologies, just googled and it is spelt Crinkle crankle!
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I knew what a crinkle crankle was, but I've never actually seen one! Most wall I suppose run down a boundary so if you want to build one it takes up more of your own land.
How about a fence?!
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I don’t think a Crinkle Crankle wall would be any good for a retaining wall. The advantage of such a wall is that it doesn’t need supporting piers. It’s a bit like folding a sheet of cardboard in zig zags. It’s easy to stand on edge . Unfolded near impossible. Any saving in bricks would I suspect be offset by the labour costs! I would love to see how the average brickie would react to a request to build such a wall.
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Tue 2 May 23 at 10:57
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Stone Wall "Nicked" - what to replace it with - zippy
