Friday, August 1, 2014

Finishing the stone work along the fence

We have stone, on top of a cement wall going down to bedrock, along much of the fence, from the driveway, along the raised garden, the South bed, and all the way to the electrical box in the middle of the back yard.  The next section to do is from the electrical box to the Bamboo Grove.


 The basic approach is to dig down to bedrock,


 and just continue that until we get to the other end.


After we extend the ditch far enough, we mark the fence and attach a black plastic sheet to separate the cement wall on our side from the earth on the other side.


And then we can create the forms -- sheets of Masonite, separated from the fence by 1x4 and 2x4 pieces (to create a 3.5 inch gap).  Bags of mulch and compost hold the Masonite sheet in place.


This first form is only about 14 feet long.  After it is done, we extend it along for a second section.



And when these forms are removed, we have the basic cement wall that we want for this section of the fence.


The third portion of this work extends the digging along the fence all the way to the Bamboo Grove.


and we can then trim it up along the fence to get a clean line for the concrete pour.


We frame it up and pour the concrete -- 10 bags of it.


and removing that finishes the concrete wall support, all the way from the electrical box to the Bamboo Grove.


Adding the limestone blocks on the top of the concrete wall finishes out the construction for this area.


This took two bags of masonry mix.

Then we have to move the pile of dirt back into place, filling the yard up next to the new limestone blocks.





We still have a small pile of dirt left over.  Presumably we will need that when the dirt next to the fence settles, over time.

This whole process took about 2 months, from Aug 1 to Oct 1 (but there were other things going on at the same time).