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

Hello everyone, today we are going to talk about stones, we are going to talk about how to build a dry stone wall. So, only stones, more or less thick, and we are going to see how we can wedge them together to make a wall, whether it is a support wall or a wall of delimitation of land.

Here I have an example of a dry stone wall that I am building. It is partly finished on the right, so it has its foot from the foundation to the crowning. And so here we see that the ground is a little higher.

I made a drain of this part there, behind the support wall. And then we see that the foundation is open. and we will see how to use, which stones to use, the biggest for the foundation, the medium stones for the building, for the construction stones, and after all the small stones like that, the small limestone stones, to put between the stones and so that the wall holds on to itself.

For the technique, what I propose is to show you an example of a cut of a wall on the board. This way we will see better the foundation stones, the limestone stones, it will speak to you better.

And then we will show the ruin. We have a ruin where we recover the stones. It's fantastic for us because we don't have any cement or lightning, the wall costs us nothing. It's only elbow grease, we get absolutely everything, it costs us nothing and there is no pollution.

For dry stones, it's great. I suggest you go to the painting and I'll show you how it's done. We move on to the painting to see the terms we use to define the walls, the foundation stones, etc. I'm going to show you the cutting of a dry stone wall.

These are basic techniques. There are different techniques that are used. These are basic techniques that work very well, but then you will see everywhere in the world there are different techniques. In any case, I mount the walls like that and these are techniques that work very well.

For the first cut, there we have the ground. So the foundation is always buried, we are always in the ground, we do not put a wall outside the ground, so we bury, the foundation is buried.

Here we are going to use the heaviest stones. Here on my wall, the heaviest stones are stones that weigh 40-45 kg. So we put the heaviest stones. Ideally, the foundation will be a little wider than the thickness of the wall that we want to make.

So if we make a wall of 50, the foundation will be 60. We call this the foundation, we call this the seat, or the base, the base of the wall.

On the foundation, we're going to start putting the built-in stones. So we put a stone, a built stone, I'm going to do it like this, and to wedge these stones in the middle we are going to put small pebbles, we call them filling stones, or fur, and wedge stones.

So here, I'm going to look at my thing, we're going to do three rows, we're going to do three rows like that, we're going to do three rows. and then we fill it, so that we can wedge the stones.

Wedge stones, fur. Well, I don't put all the terms on the board, but filling stones. So, here we have the building, we have the construction stones. Now you understand that if I continue my wall like this and I go up to 1.5 meters, my wall will open.

So here, what you have to put in, at some point, are pieces of 6. We have stones. These are stones that cross the wall and that serve as staples.

A piece of 6. I don't even know, staples, it's PH, right? Staples. The wall is a bit crooked. So, from time to time in the wall, I'll show you, we'll see it, but on my wall, we see one that is apparent, there are bits.

So it crosses and it becomes a wall stone. The wall stone is the apparent face of the stone on the wall. So here, for example, we start again with two stone buildings, we put the limestone stones, here I put two, and then here we will say that this is a wall that will be one meter high, and here we will start a horizontal key.

So the key is to put a stone that is more than half the size of the wall. So it's going to come to two thirds of the wall. So this is a piece of linden. By the way, this is a piece of linden.

We call it a piece of linden. And here we have a very short piece of linden. So here we put a small piece of wall and then we're going to cross like that. We're going to put a piece of slate there. And we're going to do that three times.

Now I'm close to the board. I think my wall is a little crooked. But my wall is a little crooked. You have to imagine that it is straight. So here we have what we call the horizontal key. This is the horizontal key, and so the foundation, all this is the building, all this is the building.

And what is missing here, on the wall, is the crowning, the crowning or the cover stones. I put stones that are wider than the wall. I did with what I had.

We can have fun doing what we really want with the crowning. There are some who put, I don't know if the term is exact, but it's like plates that are stacked on the wall. I'm going to make you a stone a little longer like I did on my wall.

The goal of the crownstone is that it is very heavy and that it holds by itself. It's like we put it down, it doesn't move anymore and it locks everything. So here we have the crownstone of the cover. So I know it's not straight, I'm going to do it again here, but otherwise we have the seat and the wall, if you want, ideally in dry stone, with the crownstone there, which is like a pyramid.

Here we have an angle. For the wall, we call it the plumb. Here I have my plumb, straight. And here we call it the fruit, the inclination. It's the fruit.

It's pretty. I love this term. It's the fruit and we're going to have 5 to 10 % inclination. Depending on what we want to do, depending on whether it's a support wall or a delimitation wall.

and the stones will come to settle on their own. I don't want to do anything stupid. Ok, so this is a quick cut. I think it tells you a bit about how to brick the stones. I have four lines, something very, very important, we always put a stone on two stones.

I'm going to do the diagram here, we're going to make a pyramid. There's nothing more, hop, there. I put one stone on two stones. I put one stone on two stones. One stone on two stones.

There's one stone on two stones all the time. No, I didn't do it again. One stone on two stones. That's really the thing. Always put one stone on two stones. Because if we do...

I'm going to show you, I got a little confused, but what he's going to do, we're going to comparison here a b c a b c I crossed it but right there but there we have a stone on two stones Here it's not crossed.

I'll show you the example of the sabre stroke right away. So, to do the sabre stroke, we're going to do that. And if I cross badly, so here my stone is crossed, and let's say I'm going to do that.

If you look closely, you can see that my stone starts to be badly crossed. Here we have a stone on two stones, there is no problem. There I did not cross my stones. Here it is badly crossed.

We call this a saber strike. and if we don't cross, if we don't put a stone on two, the blow of the saber, you can be sure that even if the wall is masonry, it will break, it is a weakness in the wall, and it is certain, me on the first wall that I made, it was masonry, it was a wall of support, but it was masonry in aglow behind, the stones were placed on a concrete sole, on a foundation,

They were masonry, so it was a wall of dry stone, apparently dry stone, but half-masonry. I made a cut in the middle of my wall, which was 12 meters long.

In the year, it cracked. So it opened. Here are some examples. I don't know if we can see them later, but there's an example down there. And you can be sure that your wall will melt.

At this level, it will always melt. So a wall that lasts in time is a wall that is always one stone above the other. I don't know if we will see it now. So, always the horizontal lines, this, all the time, the wall, this is a wall that lasts in time, to have horizontal lines.

The first point, horizontal line, what did I write? Always one stone out of two, one stone out of two. You will see that we put the stones, but what is funny is that it is rather the stone that tells us how it goes on the wall.

When we look at a stone, there is always a flat face. This flat face must always be put towards the ground. If you don't respect that, the stone, if you put it in any other direction, because there are people who will look at the stones and say, this face is pretty, I put it like that.

But it is not necessarily on its flat face. And if it is not on its flat face, what it will want to do is get out of the wall, systematically. So, we take a stone, we look at it, there is a flat face, we put the flat face towards the ground.

And there, the stone is placed, it has a good seat and it will remain in the wall. So, three, always the flat face to the ground. And a last point, as much as we can, is to put the stones, what we call full stones.

This is especially important for the support walls. When we are going to support against a talus, if we have a stone that is rather rectangular, which is long, we will rather enter the stone as much as possible into the wall.

I don't even know how to explain it, but its length, its longest side in the wall. So that, inevitably, we have more support in the wall and the stone will have more tendency to block, to stay in the wall.

So, I'm going to put it there, the fourth point, we call it Samasoni, but still, I'm going to put it, put the stones, full of stones, I say that like that, I don't know if it's in the wall.

So we understood that we don't do it, that we do it. I think we're not bad. For the horizontal line, maybe you don't realize it here, the horizontal lines, how do you explain that?

It would have been nice to be able to add on the video, I don't know if we'll be able to add examples of walls, It may be more appealing to have a picture with a wall example where we can see...

I'll try to do it here. As much as possible, we stay like this. With the feet, we can have shifts. So, how can I tell you?

We can put both feet like this. we can have some gaps. I don't even have my line like this. Here I have my first horizontal line. It's not very clear, there I'm going to have one, but let's say that the wall shifts.

The wall here, already, we see, there it starts to go up, and there it goes up here. So if you want, the wall is going to make waves and it's going to resume.

We will put photos on the video, I think it will be better for that. So here the seat, when we have horizontal lines, all the stones are imbricated in each other and for support walls there is everything that holds.

I think it's not bad for the first explanations. I think we are good and we will see what it is for. We will talk about the wall later in the videos and I will explain to you the utility of a drain what is the use of a drain and why it is absolutely necessary to make a drain on the support walls as we have here. Ok, so what I was telling you earlier about the ruin where we recover the stones well it's here. At the time there was a very large building here with walls more than one meter thick And it's a building that

is at least 500 years old. These are stones that were built 500 years ago. If it was standing for at least a century, you see, it means that the stones were laid 600 years ago here. And I really wanted to show you, we're going to see two places.

There is a place where it is going to be more of a wall of support with the big stones to show you that 600 years later it stays in place. And another corner, a little higher on the wall, where we're going to dismantle the wall.

We're going to take out the stones and see how it's done in the wall. That's fantastic to see. Come on, let's go. So, we'll go this way. So this is the base of one of the walls, the lowest wall of the building because the building is on the slope.

We see, even on four rows, we see the big stone that serves as a foundation, big stone. So this is also a big stone, this one must weigh, this is a stone, it weighs 50 kg, not far from 50 kg.

So for the example, the big stones for the foundation, the average stones to take to the building, well this wall, after it goes up, it went up several meters, but we start to have smaller stones.

And the fact of having, we still have, well there are shifts, but we still have the lines that are respected horizontally, like that, and we really have a stone in two, we have a stone in two, so there it doesn't work every time, it moves a little but we try to respect that, a stone in two, there, well, we're stuck, they caught up, but in any case, that's it, this wall there,

it's only in dry stone, there's no lime, there's no lian in there, and there, well, they're laid, they've been laid at least five centuries ago, so it's pretty impressive.

You're a man of the field, aren't you? I got carried away with these rocks, man. It's crazy. I'm going to remove this rock. This is humus, a small pebble.

There were some limestone rocks. Here we have a nice rock. This one is beautiful. It was placed on this flat surface. You can see that in the wall there are a lot of small pebbles So it's not ideal, when I removed it, it's not ideal But you can see that in the wall, the wall starts here The wall has its thickness, the wall is one meter like that So in the wall, when you remove it Here it's dry stone and I can't even remove the stones, in the end.

So here they are, they are still stuck. I'll try to do it here. Here I want to take it and recover it. Now we're in the middle of the wall, we have stones that are placed on their flat faces. There we can see well, we have the flat faces, and they are placed themselves on what we call the filling stones, the fur that we put.

And you see, everything is mounted like that. And when you remove it, sometimes it makes me sad to dismantle these walls that were built 600 years ago, but I still find it fabulous to be able to take them back and reassemble lower walls but you see inside there are a lot of limestone and you can't believe it, these limestone stones are not placed randomly, they are not thrown they are still wedged and that must be very meticulous at the time there were men who carried the big stones And it was the women and the children,

or other men too, depending on what it was, but the women and the children who put, especially for the support walls, for everything that is drainage, the small pebbles, it was the women and the children who took care of that.

But you see, there are plenty of them in there. So there were other places we could still see a little better, but it's all like that, the stones are wedged and we can't, we can't, there are dry stone walls.

You can see that we have irregular shapes of stones but in some regions they are flat plates so they pile up but with the stones we have here we have to have limestone So that's it, limestone that's what I wanted to show you and in a wall like this there wasn't even any heat sometimes it surprises me a bit but But here, we want to get out of the rocks, we can't even, we have to scratch, scratch, scratch, they are so well wedged and this one I can't even get it out,

I have to scratch all around Well, you saw the principle, there is a lot of humus but let's see if we can try to find another place a little lower, does it work? Yeah, no problem Look, here I have a big stone, and look inside, you see, all the stones like that, and there is void, in the end, in the wall, there is void, but the wall,

in stone, I find it incredible that the building went up, In fact, to build a building, you need walls that are at least 1m or 1.20m, or even more. In stone farms, we rarely build walls that are less than 70cm thick. My wall at the bottom is 55cm and ends at 50cm, but it's a 60cm high wall.

But it's just stones like that, more or less thick limestone When I see that, I think it's great That it holds like that There are a lot of moss growing I think we've already seen a lot. But it's incredible, the emptiness that there is.

Everything holds.