Stonework & Walls
Retaining walls, garden walls, raised beds and stone steps across Devon. Built with drainage behind them, so water has a way out instead of building up.
Retaining walls, garden walls, raised beds and stone steps across Devon. Built with drainage behind them, so water has a way out instead of building up.
Where it goes wrong
A leaning wall is not a stone problem
Drive around Devon and you will see them. Garden walls with a bulge in the middle. Retaining walls tipping slowly forward. Stone that has clearly moved and is still moving.
Almost none of that is the stone failing. The stone is usually fine. What failed is behind it, and it is nearly always water.
A retaining wall does not hold back soil. It holds back soil and everything the soil is currently holding.
The load
Wet ground weighs a great deal more than dry ground
A bank of dry soil pushes against a wall with a certain force. Saturate that same bank after a week of Devon rain and the force goes up sharply, because the water has nowhere to go and starts pushing in its own right.
Clay makes it worse. It holds water and swells as it does. Then a hard frost arrives and the whole saturated mass expands again.
That is the load a retaining wall actually deals with. Not the weight of the earth on a dry day in June, but the weight of it in February.
The answer
Give the water somewhere to go
Everything about building a wall that lasts comes down to that one idea.
Soil against stone
Backfilled straight up against the masonry. Water collects, pressure builds every wet month, and the wall spends its whole life being pushed. It usually takes a few years, and then it goes.
Drainage behind
Free draining stone behind the wall, a membrane so fine soil does not silt it up over the years, and a route out at the bottom. The water leaves instead of building up.
On a low garden wall that is not holding anything back, none of that applies and it would be a waste of your money. On anything retaining a bank, it is the whole job.
Foundations
What the wall stands on
Footings go below the depth frost reaches, dug to suit the ground rather than to a standard number. Clay and shillet do not behave the same way, and a footing that works in one will not necessarily work in the other.
This is groundwork before it is stonework, which is the part Graham came from.
Height
Where a wall stops being a garden job
Height changes what a wall is. A low garden wall or a raised bed is straightforward. Once a wall is retaining more than about a metre of ground, the forces involved are large enough that building regulations expect structural engineering input, and walls near a road have their own rules again.
We will tell you which category your wall falls into before we price it. Where a wall genuinely needs engineering input, we arrange it rather than gloss over it. It is not the exciting answer but it is the right one, and a retaining wall failing is not the kind of thing you want to be relaxed about.
What we build
Walls, beds, steps and edges
Retaining walls to hold a bank, level a sloping garden, or turn ground you cannot currently walk on into terraces you can.
Garden and boundary walls in stone chosen to suit the house rather than the catalogue.
Raised beds built in stone, rather than timber left to rot in wet soil.
Stone steps. Cut stone on a mortared base, with every riser the same height. Steps that vary are steps people trip on, and getting them consistent across a slope is groundwork before it is stonework.
Repairs to existing stonework where the original has moved or the pointing has gone.
The finish
Pointed, or laid dry
How the joints are finished changes the whole character of a wall.
Mortared joints, struck and finished neatly, where the wall needs the strength. Or laid tight with no visible mortar at all, where the customer wants that dry laid look and the material will carry it.
Both are proper ways to build. Which one is right depends on the wall, the stone, and what you want it to look like in twenty years.
The stone
Choosing it
Some customers know exactly what they want and order it themselves. Others would rather we sourced it. Either works.
If you want an opinion we will give one. What matters is what the house is built from, whether the stone will weather to look like it belongs, and how it behaves in a wet winter.
What it costs
No price list, and here is why
A wall price depends almost entirely on things you cannot see in a photograph. How much ground is being retained. What that ground is made of. Whether a machine can reach it, or whether every stone goes in by hand.
So we come and look, at no charge and with no obligation. You get a written quote with the work set out and a price that does not move. If something unexpected comes out of the ground, and with walls it sometimes does, we stop and tell you before we do anything about it.
Want a price for your garden?
We come out, look at the space and give you a written quote. No charge and no obligation.
Peace of mind
Guaranteed work
Our workmanship is guaranteed, with the terms set out in writing in your quote before anything starts. Materials carry their own manufacturer guarantees and we pass those on to you in full.
More of what we do
Our other services
Garden Design & Landscaping
A plan first, then the whole build, so the finished garden holds together as one piece of work.
Patios & Paving
Laid on proper foundations with the falls right, so it drains and it stays flat.
Driveways & Paths
Solid ground underneath and a surface that copes with a Devon winter.
Fencing & Gates
Posts set properly and timber that lasts, not something that leans after one gale.
Bespoke Garden Features
Pergolas, raised beds, terracing and lawns, built to the same standard as everything underneath them.