Building a natural stone wall – instructions and cost overview

The real natural stone wall consists of the most natural material that one can think of for a garden, of local stone and perhaps earth, which are piled up to form the wall without any further ingredients. This naturalness of a natural stone wall is what makes it special and, in addition to its high ecological value, also ensures that the natural stone wall blends in harmoniously with its surroundings.

A natural stone wall is durable for a long time if this is done correctly. There are many natural stone walls that have been “under their belt” for several centuries. Such dry masonry is suitable as a retaining wall for fastening slopes, as a boundary wall and as a garden wall, but it cannot absorb static loads.

Preparing the stand area is important

If you want to set up one of the most beautiful and natural walls in the world in your garden, it is advisable to create a stable and straight surface under this natural stone wall. This ensures that your natural stone wall stays the way you once piled it up, and it also helps you to stack the natural stones.

What you need to do to make such an area depends on the soil on your property:

• Smooth, solid ground only needs to be leveled with a batter board and spirit level.
• Rather yielding soil, in terms of its composition or because it is freshly poured new soil, should be solidified before the wall is built.
• How this fastening should look depends on the size of your planned structure:
• Dry stone walls up to a height of 1.20 m can be built without a foundation, but the ground should then be rammed well.
• If the dry stone wall is to be between 1.20 m and 1.50 m high, you should create a foundation of gravel or crushed stone under the wall, 30 to 40 cm deep and about 10 cm wider than the wall on the sides.
• If the dry stone wall is to be higher than 1.50 m, you will not be able to avoid hiring a structural engineer, who takes the terrain and soil conditions into account in his structural calculations.

The width of the solidified ground or the foundation depends on the dimensions of the wall. In the case of a dry stone wall, the total height and width at the bottom should be in a ratio of 3 to 1, a wall 1.20 m high should therefore be at least 40 cm wide at the bottom.

When the floor is prepared, you can start layering or preparing for it:

Good preparation helps when building the natural stone wall

A natural stone wall is about stacking stones as well as possible, starting with the largest stones at the bottom. An unwritten law of the natural stone wall is that only stones are used that occur naturally in the respective region. Depending on your German home region, you can choose between a wide variety of stones, sandstone and limestone, granite and basalt, slate and gneiss, to name just a few. All of these stones are sold in the forms that are typical for the respective extraction sites, sometimes angular rubble stones from rock massifs, sometimes rounded boulders from past or currently existing bodies of water.

Depending on which stones from your region you use, the shape of your natural stone wall changes: Slate sheets can be stacked very precisely and with almost no gaps, so such a wall can really get by with the minimum width at the bottom, but requires a lot of puzzle work to get by to group each of the best matching stones. Round field stones become a natural stone wall by stacking them in a pyramid shape and filling the gaps with earth. Such a natural stone wall is easier to build the wider and flatter it is.

Another consideration when designing your wall should be that you need to move each brick into place in the wall. Several consequences can result from this consideration: You could only buy stones of a size that you can transport yourself (with a trolley or a kind of pulling carriage), you could first make sure that the supplier has the largest field stones along the property line You could have the stones delivered in several units, from large to small. Depending on the appearance of the stones and the planned appearance of the wall, you will have to sort stones, according to specimens that fit together well … And you will have to think about how you move the stones, e.g. B.Obtain a pulling sledge or some kind of wagon with rollers or build it yourself.

Finally, you should decide whether you want to work with a batter board made of wood and mason’s cord or whether you want to layer more freehand. If you work freely, it will be a little more difficult to get an even wall with an exactly straight course and the same height and incline, but the real attraction of a drywall is, on the other hand, its natural appearance, and that includes a certain irregularity.

How to build the natural stone wall

When everything is considered and prepared, you are good to go:

• You lay out the first, broad layer of stones on the ground so that each individual stone rests optimally on the ground.
• The largest stones are used for this bottom layer, as it is wider than the top of the wall.
• The gaps between the stones are filled in as much as possible with smaller stones.
• Depending on the planned appearance of your natural stone wall, the gaps may also be filled with earth.
• If you are working with soil filling, the soil should be pressed down firmly or tamped down at each time.
• Then it’s the turn of the next layers, with the sides of your stone wall sloping in more and more.
• You have to make sure that you lay every natural stone the right way round, every stone has a beautiful and a not so decorative side.
• It is also important that every layer is stable. B. for this reason avoid.
• If it wobbles somewhere, small stones can be used like wedges, or you can fill the empty spaces with earth.
• If no stone really fits, you can use a chisel to knock an approximately matching stone into shape.
• You should definitely wear protective goggles, otherwise falling rocks could get in the eye ”.
• Occasionally measure whether you are adhering to the incline you have planned, the best thing to do is to build a simple “U” from square timber.
• If this “U” is exactly the width of the wall at floor level, you can easily work out how much slope you have at a certain height.
• This “U” is stuck with tape measures or painted with units of measure and put upside down over the wall.
• If the wall z. B. is 1 meter wide at the bottom and only 80 cm at a height of 50 cm, you have 10 cm less on each side, i.e. 10% incline.
• For the top covering of the wall, you need particularly beautiful, large and flat stones.

Cost overview for your natural stone wall

The cost of the natural stone wall initially depends on the stones used. The natural stones are sold in building materials shops and in natural stone specialist shops, at quite different prices depending on the stone material.

Sandstone in the first usable sizes is available from around 90 euros a ton, limestone too, unprocessed shell limestone costs around 130 euros per ton, granite is available unprocessed from 100 to 250 euros, for 100 – Euro, however, it is a fairly small plate break to stack up. Basalt costs 330 euros a ton even in tiny stones in sizes from 6 to 8 cm, in usable stone sizes for a natural stone wall it costs more than 500 euros, with slate it looks similar, and the prices vary with each individual stone the coloring, with the size of the individual stones anyway.

Since you can use very different stone sizes for a natural stone wall depending on the total length of the wall and you will also often use different stone sizes, any more precise price information for a natural stone wall here in the article would simply be dubious.

You will have to ask around beforehand which company in your area actually deals with unprocessed natural stone. Many natural stone traders are pure processing companies that cut, grind and polish stones, the sale of stones that are really left in their natural state would be more of a loss for these companies, and you will probably not get the cheapest offer there. Probably not in the hardware store either, here boulders are more likely to be sold as garden decorations, and at quite astonishing prices. And some stones are simply really expensive in certain sizes … So you may find that you can afford your dream wall made of large, layered slate stones immediately and without problems, but only if you sell your house, and then you don’t need a wall anymore … It could also happen to you that you find a friendly and knowledgeable natural stone dealer who instead of slate offers you porphyry mosaic broken slabs, very similar in appearance and with a thickness of 6 to 9 cm easy to handle and easy to stack for only 185 euros per ton. How far you can get with this barrel, of course, completely depends on the exact construction of your natural stone wall, with a high Friesenwall you can count on around half a ton of stones per square meter of wall.

How much the labor will cost you if you want to have your natural stone wall built, you can already guess from what has been written so far. Building a natural stone wall is and remains hard work, and a specialist company can pay for it with 100 to 150 euros per square meter. In addition, there are sometimes really significant costs if your property is located in such a way that the area on which the wall is to be built is not easily accessible.

Overall, your natural stone wall is likely to be a little more expensive than a wall made of cheap concrete blocks, and it is sure to be more expensive than a wire mesh fence. But with a natural stone wall you create a beautiful wall “for eternity”.

Conclusion