Any one know how to build a concrete wall with a ledgerstone face? Know any good Websites for this?
Answers:
Hello!
As long as your existing concrete is sound and level, it's a pretty easy job to do!
Several option exist, and they will increase/decrease the overall difficulty of the project, so decide which ones best suit your level of knowledge/workmanship:
1. You could form out the entire length of your wall with plywood and rebar and "pour" yourself a solid concrete wall, then mortar on your laminate, like flagstones, brick, or whatever rock you choose. The difficulties in doing this would be bending the plywood to your desired shape and then hammering the rebar into the ground at the appropriate areas to keep the wood from strainghtening out. Also, you would need to make sure you have enough reinforcement (rebar) on your wood to keep it from bowing/failing once you add the weight of the concrete agaist it. Another difficulty faced here is that it's an all or nothing job...once you start pouring the concrete, you pretty much have to finish the job that day before it starts hardening up, and any fine tuning you'd like to do has to be done within a few hours of the pour. One of the advantages of this approach is that once you have your form all set up and reinforced, you can just mix up a few bags of quickcrete and pour away, or even hire a concrete truck to come out to your yard, depending on how big the job is.
2. You could buy yourself some concrete blocks and build the wall yourself with mortar joints, then mortar your laminate on. Buy some mortar mix, add the right amount of water, and lay yourself a nice layer of mortar on your clean concrete base. then using a level, set your first block in place and level/square it up, "butter" the side of it with some mortar, and set your next block alongside it. Set the 2nd block, level it, butter it, wash, rinse, and repeat. Once you complate your first course of block, start on the second course, and offset your first block so that your vertical mortar joints are not in line, like you see in brickwork. Continue your course until you have your desired height. Then slap some mortar on the faces of the blocks and set your laminate.Some of the disadvantages to this approach are the heavy lifting, the longer time required, and the waste of materials. Some of the advantages to this are you can work at your own pace, laying 1 or 100 blocks, with no rush or need to hurry, and if you happen to mess up, you can simply knock out the block(s) that are wrong.
Both ways have their pluses and minuses, and as a DIY homeowner, i've done both methods when building various walls in my yard. I find that using the concrete blocks is nice when you want to do a little bit every day after a hard's days work...mix up a wheelbarrow of mortar and lay 5 blocks before dinner, or if you're feeling good, slap down 25. Pouring the concrete is nice if you have a full weekend open to you, where you can devout plenty of time to setting up your form and then pouring/finishing the concrete itself. Just remember, once the concrete hardens, you either stick with what you have, or tear down the entire wall, lol. With the blocks, you'll find that you waste mortar and it's a bit of a mess, but you can always fine tune a block for quite a while before the mortar starts to harden.
email me at longhairpete@yahoo.com if you have any other questions!
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