I found free limestone- now I need help

19 years ago

A guy down the block from me was replacing a 3-4Â tall limestone wall with the engineered blocks. I stopped and asked if he has somewhere to go with the old rocks and luckily he didnÂt. so now I have a bunch of limestone rocks to play with!

I was thinking of building a drystack retaining wall at the edge of my lot where there is a small hill going up to the neighbors driveway. At its tallest point it is only 24" tall. I figure with a little slop it will only by about 22" tall with most of the wall ranging from 18" Â 20". If I were to do the full length I could make the wall 135Â. But I donÂt think I have enough stone so I may end up with only 75-80Â.

The rocks are pretty irregular (see pics) so stacking will be fun, but together they were a wall once before, I should be able to make a wall again.

My original plan was this Â

Dig back into the hill a little ways,

Dig a trench and fill with sand for a base leaving enough depth for the first row to be slightly below grade

Back fill with gravel, drain tile, gravel, fabric, top soil and grass seed

Enjoy

My questions are the following.

1. Any idea how to judge the length of wall I will get out of these rocks? The previous wall was about 70Â long but varied in height from 1-4Â. Based on what my truck can haul and the number of trips I guess I have about 4.5 Â 5 tons.

2. Given the short height of the wall and the porousness of the rock, is gravel and drain tile necessary behind the wall?

3. Again given the shortness of the wall is a sand base necessary?

4. Would you recommend any mortar at all or just go drystack?

5. If I plan to fill in front of the wall with a flower bed is it necessary to dig down for the first row.

6. Would you suggest doing a Roman style stack wall like this? I kind of like that idea because it gives me room to easily add plants between the rocks like there were in the previous wall - I saw this link in another post -http://www.vcstone.com/stackroman.html

7. Anything else I should consider?

Thanks for the help

Tony

Here is a link that might be useful: My rock pics

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Comments (4)

inkognito
19 years ago
First, you should get all these stones over to your place. They look easy to work with dry.
A Roman style wall on the other hand is a crock.
The planning goes slow.
tvrolyk
Original Author
19 years ago
By "my place" I assume you mean my house, not necessarily the exact place where the wall will be built. I have already moved the stones to my property. If you read the post carefully I estimated their weight based on the number or truck loads it took to move them.

Also if you looked at the pictures you can see the hill I will be putting them up against.

Also can you clarify what you mean by the Roman Style wall being "a crock". I usually use that word to mean someone is telling me a tall tale but I am not sure if you mean it the same way.

thanks
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tvrolyk
Original Author
19 years ago
Moved the pics to the this link

Here is a link that might be useful: My rock pics
inkognito
19 years ago
I will try to give a more lucid response than my previous attempt.
I see no advantage, either aesthetically or functionally in the project you suggest although I can see a few problems. My suggestion would be to use the stones around the back corner where they are piled now. You will need a foundation. The stones you have look as though the face is flat and mossy so it can go back together pretty much as it was.
The construction technique for dry stone walling or dry stack walling is well documented on the web.
Roman walls were put together using lime mortar.

I found free limestone- now I need help

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inkognito

tvrolyk
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I found free limestone- now I need help

Comments (4)

inkognito

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inkognito

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