Monday, February 24, 2014

Tips On Building A Dry Stack Stone Wall #2: Getting Stone



In the previous post we took a look at the need for erosion control in our project area
 and the tools that we would use in building our dry stack stone walls.

The posts to date in this continuing series are:
This series is directed to the owner builder rather than the professional stone mason.

Let's look now at the stone we are using, where it came from, 
and how we determined where to have it dumped,
so that it would be readily accessible but not in our way.

In the photo above we are well into our project
 and we have just gotten the last of our three 14.5 ton loads of stone.
I have created a pathway where I can easily use the hand trucks to carry stone
or roll it down the hill if they are too large for the hand truck.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Tips On Building Dry Stack Stone Walls #1: Project, Tools


This is the first in a series of tips on building dry stack stone retaining walls for landscaping,
gained from my personal experience and particularly aimed at the owner builder.

In future posts I will be discussing topics such as how to build durable walls and steps,
how to design the layout for a project, theory on dry stack walls, 
 stone as a material and what stone works best in each part of the project, site management,

 The photo above shows the finished project which gives you a feel for the scope of this work.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Installing Large Size Sun Room Windows



After having built and lived in quite a few passive solar sun rooms over the last 40 years 
I have come up with a good way to set the large double glazed glass units
 that are commonly used for such rooms.

About a year and a half ago we purchased a passive solar heated adobe fixer upper
 with a very long 80' sunroom, built in the mid 1980's.