The Joy of a Brick Garden Wall

[Ferdinand]

(This thread is about brick walls - please do not invade it with fences, and hedges - except as garnish for the brick).

 

In a few days I will be having a small front garden wall built ... about 5m x 1m high so 500 or so bricks, in a street of small 1960s bungalows.

 

I did a little wander up my street to crib a few ideas, and these were a few of the walls I have locally. It is a former lane lane which has been absorbed into the near town centre and has buildings from approx 1830 to present. There will hopefully be a longer blog post, but these are a few examples off the type I may be having built. I am looking for comments.

 

The surprise for me is how quickly these deteriorate, especially with the wrong choice of materials - some are looking shoddy after only 25-30 years. IMO brick walls should easily last a century unless there is a requirement not to do so.

 

Here we go.

 

A Nice looking wall, made with facing bricks (like my house) and copers, and basic engineering bricks as DPC.

 

 

B But it has spalled badly. Do not use facing bricks for a garden wall.

 

 

C I like this combination of red and blue. 40-50 years old and suffering a little? On the main road with the traffic.

 

 

D Posh gatepost. Inadequate materials as used in the flats behind. Now badly deteriorated.

 

 

E Yep.Like it. Recent, and they have trees in the right place, too. But are those facers and will it spall later?

 

 

F As above, but two or three decades older and now careworn:

 

 

G Similar with added decoration from blue engineering bricks. English Garden Wall Bond, I think.

 

 

H Again, with blue decoration included in the paving:

 

 

I Another variation. Someone did not like the postbox in the gatepost.

 

 

J A very carefully done piece of architecture imo. That stone wall style used to be the dominant note on the road, and is still the background.

 

 

What have you done or seen? What will wear best?

 

Feel free to post lots of pictures of garden walls from your area.

 

If there is one fault with the above imo, it is that there is no discernible vernacular in this selection.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

If you want it to last, build the whole lot out of engineering bricks, a mix of red and blue to get your desired pattern.  Unlike a house wall, a garden wall will remain damp for long periods, and the frost gets in to a normal facing brick and you see the results.  Same applies for cement render to a garden wall, seldom lasts long for the same reason. Engineering bricks tend not to absorb water so less likely to fail.

 

I like the English garden wall bond one with a row of soldiers on top, rather than concrete capings.

[MikeSharp01]

Why not investigate a dry stone wall  just a short jump from pic J, perhaps expensive but the rocks will last forever, building it will be very therapeutic, no cement so other then the digger diesel getting it out and the lorry to haul it to you almost carbon zero and it can be repaired very simply.

 

[ToughButterCup]

Your middle name Churchill by any chance?

[Ian]

Bricks come in various grades of durability & frost resistance. You'll need a F2/S2 grade brick which is the most frost resistant and lowest salts content (they are sometimes referred to by the old F/L classification)

[Brickie]

Engineerings or similar hard fired brick at the bottom is always good,as is a tile creasing to throw rainwater off the face if not using coping. 

Youre right about Eng Gard Wall bond but the brickie broke a cardinal rule-change direction,change bond!

I.e the header course on the sides should be 2 courses down & up from the header course on the long side. 

Edited May 25, 2017 by Brickie
Ocd

[Ferdinand]

Decision made. I am going all blue engineering brick, with a double row of red tiles to be a dripguard at the top.

 

I will probably have a couple of details - say diamonds - using a small number of the bricks I have in honey-cream matching the house.

 

Materials ordered to arrive tomorrow just in case my builder decides to work Saturday or Monday.

Ferdinand

 

Edited May 25, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

I am wondering about putting the silhouette of a large sitting dog in my wall in a contrasting brick colour just to give an interesting twist to the road, but I do not know if I have the nerve .

 

F

Edited May 25, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Brickie]

15 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

I am wondering about putting the silhouette of a large sitting dog in my wall in a contrasting brick colour just to give an interesting twist to the road, but I do not know if I have the nerve .

 

F

With the neighbours or having that conversation with your brickie?

[Ferdinand]

15 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

I am wondering about putting the silhouette of a large sitting dog in my wall in a contrasting brick colour just to give an interesting twist to the road, but I do not know if I have the nerve .

 

F

 

The Brickie who is building it for me went "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" (roughly) when I suggested the dog.

 

My concern for neighbours would be if it became a feature, and had people coming to gawk. I love the idea of making it slightly more fun for the kids from the local Primary School in the morning, or people out for a walk on the footpath that runs close by into the country park .. but it would be easy to disturb a quiet lovely road eg if we had a few Tonka-Tanks visiting during the day to gawp after a Facebook feature.

 

Edited May 26, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

Diaper work is nice though.

 

http://www.building.co.uk/bond-patterns-in-brickwork/3046522.article

 

[PeterW]

26 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Diaper work is nice though.

 

http://www.building.co.uk/bond-patterns-in-brickwork/3046522.article

 

 

I hope you pay day rate .... as your brickie will hate you by the end of that ..!

[Jeremy Harris]

Around here it's common to have walls built with a mix of brick and flint, in a diamond or box pattern.  Even some new builds have walls like this.  I hate to think of the hassle it must be for the brickies.............

 

It also seems to be a local feature for walls to have a thatched, slate, or sometimes tile, pitched capping, with the eaves extending out a fair way, to keep rain off the vertical faces a bit.  If I get a chance later I'll try and take some photos.

[Ferdinand]

I think that this kind of slightly more elaborate brickwork is basically straightforward but different, and not *that* more difficult once you are used to it - do 50,000 bricks like that and you will be quicker. We think it is difficult because we do not do it enough ourselves.

 

I think the implication we sometimes see (not here) that only Artisans can do things that look complex is a bit of a smokescreen.

 

I am reminded of all sorts of skills I saw from 25-year experienced engineers when doing site training in Telecomms - in my case particularly cable management and tying in - that looked as though I would never learn in my wildest dreams.

 

IMO walls faithful to a local style for walls are perhaps more important for the 'feel' of an area than blanket cladding everything in the correct type of stone from the correct quarry.

 

F

 

Edited May 26, 2017 by Ferdinand

[jack]

7 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

 - in my case particularly cable management and tying in

 

Doing that well is harder than it looks!

[Jeremy Harris]

I think one thing that the planners seem to overlook, when imposing conditions relating to the "local vernacular", is that older walls were built with whatever materials were locally available at that time, with skills that were available locally.  Trying to replicate those walls today may or may not make sense. 

 

By far the most common old "garden" walls around here are made of chalk cob, essentially rammed ground chalk, finished with a lime render, and these walls were originally topped with thatch.  Many are now topped with slate or tile, and there are lots of newer fake "cob" walls around, where conventional masonry has been roughly rendered and then painted to try and look a bit like an old chalk cob wall.  They tend to stand out like sore thumbs, but the planners often seem to demand them all the same.

 

Whether it makes sense to build chalk cob garden walls today I doubt.  They need constant maintenance, are prone to collapse if the ground gets very wet (we lost quite a few of them locally, in the winter floods a few years ago) and were only originally built that way because it was cheap - the raw material is literally poking out of the ground all around here.  I doubt that the people that built these old chalk cob walls would have made them that way if they had access to cheap bricks and mortar.

[Tennentslager]

Not great resolution in this picture but check out the brick work in this...Templetons Carpet Factory...made top quality carpets for the likes of the White House and QE2.

[Ferdinand]

Another brick in the wall...

 

 

Difficult to judge until the end, but brick acid is to hand.

 

F

[Ferdinand]

Progress. Looking good.

 

Up to the tile course. One row of Brick On Edge to be added, with three small end/middle pillars and blue solid bricks for the caps, then cleaned down with brick acid.

 

The dustbin area you can see will be screened by a blue brick perforated wall with tile capping this week.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2017 by Ferdinand

[jack]

Looking very smart. Shame about the lack of dog silhouette. 

[Ferdinand]

We are nearly finished,

 

The garden wall just needs a little more brick acid and wire brush treatment.

 

The dustbin shelter needs one more course then a top of tiles and a tidy up.

 

And one of a bit more of the hard landscaping.

 

F

Edited June 17, 2017 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

... And the council need to come and resurface the footpath?

[Ferdinand]

27 minutes ago, ProDave said:

... And the council need to come and resurface the footpath?

 

Probably.

 

It has been like that for 20 years.

 

I need Jack with a pail of water to fall down and break his crown and Sue the Council.

Edited June 17, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

I like that brickwork, particularly the contrast between the two colours. 

 

Pity about the pavement, but then you could have had brickwork like this, to match it:

 

[Mackers]

I had to laugh at that brickwork. How on earth?