Hit the Dirt; Building Dry Stone Walls

Hello this is Dave Weigel today's co-host of hit the dirt and today I'm going to talk about a topic that's very near and dear to my heart and it's dry stone walls Dr. Stone walls are an integral part of the landscape in Maine. Everywhere every road we ride down we can look and see like in mosque covered walls that are on the edges of fields or retaining walls that were built to hold up banks and these are the kind of walls that I love the build I like to build a wall that looks old from the time I put it up and it. But there are many other interpretations of stone work as well. Some people like a very formal look but you can go very rustic looking rip rap works in some situations where the wall isn't going to be viewed by a lot of people even. But I wanted to give some basics today on how to build a dry stone retaining wall for the beginner would be two to three feet high should be a maximum height that you try to retain with this dry stone wall. And if you want to go any higher than that you have to remember that you need to build the base of the wall approximately as wide as

the wall is tall. If you want to get into four and five foot high situations it's a. Usually recommended to pour concrete by the experts but that's a personal decision I think it is still possible if you put enough mass of stone and lean the stone wall back into the bank enough you can achieve 4 to 5 foot high banks building dry stone walls. The first thing you need to do building a stone wall is to dig a trench. Dig it as wide as the base of the wall is going to be and dig it a foot deeper than you want the bottom of your stones. Then you fill it in with crushed stone. Put six inches of crushed stone in the bottom of the trench and pack it down real good and then put stone dust put a layer of stone dust three or four inches of stone dust on top of that and then you've got an excellent basis to start setting. Bay St. and the first stones the bottom stones of a stone wall he want to start with big rocks hundred pound rocks. If it's going to be a big wall and if it's a

smaller wall you can get by with a little bit smaller rocks in the in the bottom. But remember as the base rocks are the ones that are going to keep the frost from shifting your wall around as much. And it's important to look for stones that have flat top so you can use it doesn't matter what the bottom of a base dome looks like because you're going to bury it into the the bed of crushed stone and stone dust that you just made so pick a stone for the base it has a nice flat top and it hopefully has a nice face on it when you're building a stone wall you have to remember you're trying to create rock faces that are in basically the same plane unless you're doing very fancy work you don't have to try to get every rock exactly looking the same and stone walls are going to look like concrete block walls and we're glad they don't. So take your time look at your stone. Turn it around three or four different ways try it one way tried another. Then dig a hole that helps approximately fit the bottom of your rock. Set it in so that the top of the rock is

basically level or actually pitching back a little bit into the bank. The general rule in building a stone wall is you want the tops of every stone that you put on the wall leaning back so the weight of the wall is acting back into the bank and acting down into the ground. You never want any stone that you put on a dry wall to have its center of gravity acting forward like it wants to pull itself off of the wall. And when you put each stone in after you've set your base stones. Like I said you as many big stones as you can get and try to set them basically at the same level though you can make steps up and down. You just have to realize as you build your next level you'll have to come up or down to meet the other level that you've started and lean all your stone into the wall and build higher until you get to the capstone that are going to have a face not only on the front but the top as well. And as you're building this wall you have to remember the joints that you're making every stone that you fit

up to another stone is going to have to try to hold material from seeping through the wall so you have to take time and try to fit your stone. Cut the pieces to fit together lay on top of each other and take all the motion every time you set a stone into the wall. You have to find shims. You have to take so each corner of the stone as you push on opposite corners of the middle of the rock it won't pivot or shimmy anymore. And then you can continue to go upward until you've kept your wall. You begin to backfill it you put lots more crushed stone the same material that you put in your base to let drainage the whole beauty of a dry stone wall is that it percolate water flows right through. So you put lots of crushed stone in behind your wall and Loman or whatever material trying to create if you're building a driveway put gravel and create cause the bank to fuse right with the stone wall that you've built. You try to get the back of your wall to become

part of the bank that you're creating and you create a nice usable space whether you're building a patio a driveway or a raised bed for a garden. Whatever you want to do with the stone wall their endless possibilities and it will always look good right here on the coast of Maine. This is Dave Weigel for hit the dirt. I'll talk to you about St. patios next week.