Laid the first course of stone between all the concrete columns and parged them into position using two batches of mortar (25 pounds of mortar mix, 75 pounds of sand, and 9 pounds of water per batch – carefully weighed on our old baby scale). Will find out in the morning if I mixed the mortar properly… think it might have been a tad dry. Okay, so what the heck is "parging"? Well that would be the process of applying a cement mixture to a surface (in this case the back of the rock walls) to join masonry together. From the front, the between-column rock walls will look like they are dry laid. However, by "parging" the backside of the wall, the rocks actually will be cemented together. Used 70 stones which averaged 4″ in thickness. Doing the math (for what else is there to do of an evening at Fern Lake?), the between-columns rock walls will need approximately 1,550 stones. Finding that many stones on our property, not a problem. Finding that many stones no more than 6″ wide with two reasonably parallel flat surfaces and a good perpendicular face, that’s going to take some sleuthing... and maybe even a backhoe?!?!
Laid the first course of stone between all the concrete columns and parged them into position using two batches of mortar (25 pounds of mortar mix, 75 pounds of sand, and 9 pounds of water per batch – carefully weighed on our old baby scale). Will find out in the morning if I mixed the mortar properly… think it might have been a tad dry. Okay, so what the heck is "parging"? Well that would be the process of applying a cement mixture to a surface (in this case the back of the rock walls) to join masonry together. From the front, the between-column rock walls will look like they are dry laid. However, by "parging" the backside of the wall, the rocks actually will be cemented together. Used 70 stones which averaged 4″ in thickness. Doing the math (for what else is there to do of an evening at Fern Lake?), the between-columns rock walls will need approximately 1,550 stones. Finding that many stones on our property, not a problem. Finding that many stones no more than 6″ wide with two reasonably parallel flat surfaces and a good perpendicular face, that’s going to take some sleuthing... and maybe even a backhoe?!?!
