Construire un mur en pierre sèche : la pratique / Cédric Contardo

Hello, so for the project I wanted to show you the project we are doing here with the dry stone wall. We have a space on this side where it is a gym so we have an interior part and this part which is outside, which is about 80 square meters and behind we have a space where we are going to make, we are going to sink a slab and we are going to make a bike garage all in wood with So here we have about 20 square meters.

So what I was telling you is that the wall here has two functions. Since we have the ground here which is higher, it goes up to this part. Here we are going to terraced again, but up to this part, roughly, the wall will be buried on the other side. there it is already gone, and then it ends up in a simple wall of delimitation, space delimitation so more specifically, there I buried, how to show you?

my wall is 7.5 meters long, it is 55 cm at the base and it ends up 50 cm high I don't know if you can see it like that, but you can see that it is slightly inclined towards the slope in the upper part there. And on this side, I made the stones on purpose, in fact, in all this part there, the wall is wider.

If you dig there, it's not a linear wall. I did it on purpose so that the wall is more resistant and that it takes more seats to act as a support wall. So, on this side, we see it here, I have my stones there, which end. I made a drain from the foot of the wall to its crown.

There is very little soil. The drain, you absolutely have to make a drain because it creates a rupture, so it already favors the flow of natural water, and it creates a rupture between the wall and the fact that there is soil that can come into the wall and all the root systems of the trees that can come.

the strength of a root is incredible, it would explode the wall so the drain is really, up to here, with the terracing up to here you can be sure that my wall will be buried what else to say about the wall so here we can see my foundation I am in the ground, so really my first row, here we see it, we are buried, my first row is almost buried, this is my foundation with more or less heavy stones. So it's about 55 cm wide and I end up 50 cm above my crown.

Here we see the limestone. I started to put some in, but I use small pebbles like this to put my stones. And then I put, as you can see, in the ruin over there, and I don't have much end like that.

I filled it up a bit to make it calmer, but it's not necessarily, we would have limestone stones of this size, it would already be ample enough. Here for example I have a Boutis, it's interesting to see it, here I have a stone that crosses my wall and that comes to make this connecting stone, which comes to make So there are a few of them in the wall.

My wall is not very high. So I put a few pieces of wood. But with the thickness that there is, it does not climb much. If I'm not mistaken, for the foundation, it must be 1 third of the height of the wall.

So if we have a 1 meter wall, the foundation must be about 30 cm. Here I have a wall that is 55 cm in foundation and that is 60 cm high, so it's almost a cube, so it won't move.

What else can I show you? Maybe on this side, I put my crownstones You can see that my crownstones You don't hear a lot of clack clack This one is going to move a little As you can see, the crown stones, this one must weigh 40-45 kg, so the crown stones are interesting, we put them down and they don't move, they hold everything.

So, for this wall, I didn't inspect it well, 1 stone out of 2, I see that I made these stones, it's the first wall I made with these stones, it's true that they really have no shape, so it's guys who went to get the first stones at the top, they brought me monsters of stones, So it's true that I struggled a bit at the beginning, but here's the goal, one stone out of two, I have one stone out of two.

Here I have a limestone stone, but I have one stone out of two. And I still have my lines, I have the horizontal lines, they are there. I respect my horizontal lines, the last one, I have a horizontal line, there is a lot of sitting.

And then my stones are placed on their flat faces. I'm going to show you the wall. I just saw it because I'm looking at it. I'm looking at my wall. The wall. And I see that I have a nice hit of sand here.

This is my foundation stone, my base. I have one stone out of two, one stone out of two. On the other hand, there, I stacked the stones, I would have had to shift.

So here, I have a hit of sand. We'll see in time, I don't want to get sick, but I don't worry too much about the height and width of the wall. It won't move, we'll do another video next year to see.

But here I have a nice saber cut, so it's something you shouldn't do. That's a bad example. Then you have to have fun, for example, I put, for me I filled these stones, they will not stay like that, I put weight because I wanted to get them out, I used them, these are stones that I wanted to use as a booties, so that they are crossing the wall, then I said to myself, I'm going to make seats.

I made another one and I had fun doing a little walk. It holds very well. This one holds. After, there must be weight on it. I don't know, a man of 90 kilos.

But there I put two stones to have fun aesthetically. It's true that making a stone wall like that, there are stones, there are a good amount of stones. You need big stones, you need medium stones, you have to find flat stones, you have to make small pebbles and all that.

And you have to use the basic techniques as I presented to you. On the other hand, I would like to show you something that I did spontaneously here. I had not at all planned to do that.

At the base, what we wanted here was a big wall here, with a detachment, and go on a small wall of 2 meters, about this height and continue there with the opening to delimit the gym there.

And when I blessed my stones and all that here, there was one that stood up in front of me like that and I looked at the stone and I don't remember which one it is, I think I put it there between and I said, but I'm going to save time, I'm going to win stones and all that and I'm going to put the stones up.

So what I did is I dug, I sifted a little bit of the earth, I removed the big grain and I put the stones up. So that's it, it's a little bit of creativity, but that's it.

So what I wanted to say is that there we can, for example, there are 22 stones up, not big stones, It doesn't require any technique, you just have to put them down and wedge them. I put some pebbles in the middle.

And in any case, it's a guide to delimit the terrain. And there are 12 stones, I think. There are 12 stones that I buried. And it's true that we call on our creativity. We have fun with the stones and it's cool.

So there you go, I'm doing a little walk to delimit the entrance. I'm going to put two rows of stones here. but that was the idea. So here is an example, it is a wall that is masonic it is jointed and all that, we have the joints here it is not very high, but we see that the stones are not crossed at all here they are completely stacked here if we look at it again, we see saber cuts this is a saber cut, which is from the foot, well, there is no crowning,

we will say that this is the crowning stone, but here we have a saber cut, so okay it's Masonic, but for an example, here, the wall is Masonic, here we have a saber cut all along here, and here we can even see, I don't even know, Here the stone broke, here the razor worked here.

Here we can be sure, I don't know when this wall was made, but it will only open. It can only open. It will open. This is a long way, it's stuck there.

These are just sands. I have one on my wall over there. I'll see what it will do with time. but it's really a weakness, the saber cuts, it's really a weakness in the walls.

Here we see, look it's funny, no, this one was there. For example, when you glue, this one, the guy thought, I'm going to glue it here.

It couldn't hold, it's not possible. It would have been necessary to put it in full stone, here it is not full stone, if it had come in like that, masonry, jointed, it holds, there it could never hold.

So it's pretty when it's just been done, but here's another example of... In addition, this one, the saber stroke, ok, it is still vertical there, there is a detachment, but indeed, it's sure, it's just stones that are badly crossed.

It's bad manners, even if we say it like that, bad manners. And the wall, it opens and it can only open. We can see the difference. I had done some research on this.

Here we have a delimitation. For me it would be an end of a wall. Here, with the big stones, like a chain of angles. There is one here, and at the other end of the wall there is one there. And I asked myself the question of whether this wall was made at different times.

For me, I would say yes, because we can see that it has nothing to do with the work here. The wall has not moved, the stones, how they are positioned and all that. And there, all the side that has been...

started to break, stones coming out, the wall that is bombed. but I think it was useless, he was doing it anyway, I don't know, it was a mechanical discharge, I don't know, but he was finishing like that, as if the wall was finished, and he was catching up with the wall.

I did my research but I don't remember anymore. So here we see a part that still did not hold. And there, this wall which is just beautiful, I don't know what time it is, but we can see that it is 3 meters high. It is 3 meters high.

They have made a kind of crowning on it. We can see the stones that are a bit diagonal, a small end of the crowning. Behind a wall like this, generally, there are drains. The drain is huge, and it goes from the foot to the wall.

I don't know if I can say... It's a different technique. It's not one stone out of two. There are no horizontal lines. There are no one stone out of two. But how they placed the stones...

I think this wall is more than a century old. It's at least 150 years old. It's another technique that works very well. And if you look at the profile, it has a good inclination, so what we call the fruit.

You can see, it goes, it bends. Anyway, they don't have... Here, the 10%, the 10 % are there widely. Because 2 meters, 2 meters we should...

Yes, 2 meters, for 10 % we should have 20 cm like that. And here we have much more. So the stones are placed on the slope. And here we see, like on the other side, it's like the end of the wall.

I was wondering the last time, it's like the end of a wall, as if this part was made at a time. It's not the same manufacture, it's not the same era, nor the same people who made the wall.

The fact of having horizontal lines and placing one stone always on two stones is the theory where the stones will hold, it would be ideal, at least for me, or what I have learned over time, it is ideal, but as you can see, this wall has several decades, it is certain, It may even be a century old.

We can see that it's not necessarily respected, neither the horizontal lines nor the one stone on two stones, but on the other hand, it holds. We can even see that there is ivy coming in.

There is a lot of ivy coming in here. It's dead now, so it won't grow any more. We can imagine that a wall like this, that the drainage… When I see the construction of this wall, the stones, how they are placed, it's a bit neglected.

Then I see that it's placed, it looks like they really masoned this concrete mill. So for me, between this construction there and the one next to it, it has nothing to do with it.

There, the guys knew how to work, there they did a crazy job. And there, well, it was done, I want to say quickly, but it was done differently.

But in any case, it holds for the height of the wall and all that. When I see the size of the stones, it has its effect. One thing I didn't talk about is the angle chaining. So it's true that we make a wall, but when we get to the end of the wall, technically you have to do an angle chaining so that the end of the wall holds.

And there is a stone that I didn't talk about, it's the panres. And the panres is the opposite of a boutis. The boutis will be crossing the wall to make an agrafe, a connecting stone.

and the panel is a brick, a rectangular stone, and we're going to put it along it to make an angle. Here I see one. So here this stone is narrow and it comes up to here.

So basically, there is a big stone, impeccable, and there is a panel like that, sorry, that makes a brick that goes into the wall, and a panel like that. And there he crossed it like that, on this wall.

So we can see that it's a chain. So that's for the angle, or to finish a wall, we can finish a wall like that. And there, his crowning, he put a stone.

This stone weighs almost 50 kilos, that's for sure. So it's put down, and that's it. It's a Boutis-Pineres. Boutis-Pineres, and it's crossed.

One that goes on this side, one that goes on this side.