My Poor Wall

I had a similar situation last year, its a double faced wall below. Basically its a "cheap" drystone wall. The builders build up two "face" walls and fill the central void with soil/debris...then at the top they cap it with a full width heavy shaped stone to tie it together.

In this pic I had a very large ivy root I needed to get out, trouble is it had grown into the soil/debris in the wall itself...becuase of this the wall was collapsing inwards into the void.



I did not capture a photo sequence of what I did unfortunately, but I spoke to a local stone specialist in our village and this is what he advised (in blue).

Support the upper good stonework by wegding gently with angled pieces of timber, dont wedge them in tightly..or knock these wedges in with a hammer for a tight fit.

Remove the root, and any loose stonework (in my case this was a good builders bucketful...where the wall had fallen inwards)..brush out the loose dirt. Point/mortar the surrounding stone..getting as much mortar in as you can and lay a reasonable bed at the base of the hole...leave overnight to set-up. Next day start to lay the face stone again filling the void with mortar and rubble stone (he advised me to get hold of some old real slates, break these up to wedge between the bonds of existing good stone and the new stone I was laying to help consolidate it) remove the supports as necessary as you build up the wall.

On the third day, remove the last main support and point between the gap of what you built the day previously and the old upper stone.

Consider pointing the whole wall now.

Hope this helps you!

Steve...

 

That's brilliant - I suspect a very similar situation though I'm not convinced there is a back to my wall. I think I need to try and get what is left supported and then leave it until the weather warms up just a little.

 

If you look at "My Garden Project" in my sig under this post...all the recent stonework I have done at around 2-3 degrees C, overnight I just covered it with a tarpaulin to protect it from frost..it still sets fine..just a lot slower. But I would not do it in the rain, mortar turns to soup very quickly.

I forgot to mention..I used quite a strong mix. 3 parts Builders sand to one part cement.

Steve...