Landscaping a garden feature wall building

An insight to the daily life of a garden design and landscaping build up on a rear garden located in Cullompton, Exeter, Devon.

Day 7

View previous day here

Coffee.

Laying blockwork

Using a Marshalltown bricklaying trowel I apply the 4;1 ratio mortar to the top face of the plumb 225mm wide 7 Newton concrete blockwork, the thickness of the mortar bed on which each block is installed shall be 12-15mm.

For brickwork the bed and uniform perpend thickness will be 10mm.

Laying on the mortar

I construct the two ends of the landscape rear garden feature wall, these are known as quions. Two courses of concrete blockworks are constructed on top of each other, staggering the blocks by means of two hall blocks on the next two courses insures this bond is locked together giving maximum strength to the overall bonding.

My mortar is creamy and easy to use, I'm not breaking by wrist trying to take a trowel full each time.

As I build by quion I insure the block work is level and plumb, by taking care constructing both quoins means I can use brick pins and a string line and run the block work in quickly, the larger the run the quicker you become as the preparation of the plumb quions allows you to use the spirit level less.

However, I do like to check my work every 20 / 30 blocks... habit or ocd.. I don't know.

Final sub base levelling

As I run the blockwork in, one member of the team sets the laser level receiving eye at the top of raised paving level from the datum, four road pins are installed on each corner of the Marshalls fairstone caramel cream raised seating area.

The two pins next to the open footings are set to 75mm below finished paving level, allowing 50mm full mortar bed and 25mm for the Marshalls high quality paving slab product.

Yes, we know the patio paving is 22mm thick !!.

The level for the two pins at the point of the step are adjust to allow a very slight run off for the surface water, I cant have my clients wine glass sliding off the glass top black rattan table can I?

You'll note that all levels are marked TOP OF TAPE for all string-line work.

Any person that walks through my string lines and snaps them are in debt to me by £10....

Final wacker compaction

The raised seating area now has two consolidated layers of 50mm hardcore sub base stone material and each layers has a minimum of three passes of the wacker compactor plate to each layer.

This sub base is ready for patio paving, just not yet, I have footings, block work, lighting, beadwork, scratch coat, top render and two coats of very dark graphite to paint first.

Clean site, fill up water butts, cover walling with Hessian, etc, and clean tools.

Tomorrows blog:

Landscaping on a Marshalls kitchen garden

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