Garden wall.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Pal spend quite a bit two years ago having new walls all round his small garden. Brick to a couple of feet high, then 9x9" brick pillars supporting the usual wood panels. Total height about 5-6ft, I'd guess.

Looked nice if you like that sort of thing.

In the recent winds, one wall blew down to the level of the lower bricks. Ie, the wood and pillars. Wall on the other side of the garden which is similar, OK. Luckily, it all fell into his garden, as that side was really his neighbour's wall.

Contractor wants to rebuild just that one wall with steel reinforcement rods down the pillars. Talked about act of god...

The wind was quite high in this part of London on Thursday, but hardly a once in a lifetime event - and no local trees where blown down, as has happened before.

[Tricky Dicky]

People build these two brick pillars and then wonder why they fall over so easily. Cannot see how a builder is going to reinforce pillars like that wi th steel bars unless he uses the sort of bricks with three holes in them ev en then he will be lucky to keep the holes aligned over that height. Last l ot of brick pillars I saw erected the rebar was sunk in the concrete footin gs for 18" X 18" pillars and the centre hole filled with concrete.

Richard

[Andrew]

9x9 inch brick pillars are totally unsafe above about 5 or 6 courses. Need to be a minimum of 1.5 bricks by 1.5 bricks square, then there is a 4 inch square hole in the middle for a bit of rebar and some rough cement.

Even without the rebar, it is massively stronger than 9X9 inch. However, if they are 6 feet high with fence panels attached then

18 x 18 inch might be more appropriate if exposed to wind forces.

And no part of the pillars or coping stones should cross the boundary.

[Robin]

Unless the requirements of the Party Wall Act are complied with?

I thought that Part 5 of the Act applies to a new boundary party wall which would straddle the boundary line so is OK if the requisite written notice(s) are served and permission(s) received.

[Brian Gaff]

Yes you certainly do need it to go into the ground or the whole lot will fall over as one lump.

Down the road from me one wall has not been up more than about five years and already you can rock it by leaning against it.

I'm no bricklayer but surely walls with nothing holding them at the top, like the rest of a building are little better than a kids pile of bricks after a few years.

People are pretty stupid sometimes. At the bottom of the hill there always was a wall with scalloped edges bowed inwards, just like you would build a dam. the idea was to keep the mostly clay from sliding down over the footways and destabilising the house. The pillars went deep and were reinforced. Sadly the bloke there needed a double driveway, so proceeded to get a JCB dig out a flat bit after removing two sections of this wall. He then built a flat wall all around his dug out and concreted the base with a very nice wrought iron gate and pretty stairs leading from the house into his hole. Looked wonderful.... For two years then the wall fell in and he had to get his house underpinned and goodness knows what else. He then moved out.

Sometimes I do despair at people who ignore the bleedin obvious. As I say its not rocket science. Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The 'builder' designed the whole lot to a rough specification. The client didn't specify what size any pillars would be - but merely approved the design based on a computer pic. They are specialists in this sort of job, and did it very efficiently.

Right. I'll pass that on. ;-)

It will be interesting to see just what they do. As I said, that wind speed wasn't *that* rare round here. There was a lot more local damage done a few years ago.

[Davidm]

The recent winds took down a 6ft x 6" square oak fence post which was supported by a concrete spur. The spur actually snapped at ground level, including 4 out of the 5 steel rebars in the spur. Was a right bu**er getting the remains out of the concrete footings! Drilling a hole in the bottom bit of the spur, inserting a 12mm concrete screw bolt, then lashing it to a 2.4m of 2"x4" timber balanced on bricks as a lever with 16 stone of me on the end eventually did the job.

[Peter Johnson]

Wind direction is a factor as well. Was it the same as before? Trees are usually uprooted during gales because the wind direction is opposite to the prevailing direction. They put down more/longer roots on one side in response to the prevailing wind.

[Roger Hayter]

That is the only way to do it properly. And you need buttresses for the one brick lower part of the wall anyway.

[Andrew]

Standalone boundary walls usually belong to one of the owners.

I don't believe that you can simply issue a written notice and effectively claim that your new fence with 18 inch square pillars can invade your neighbours land by 9 inches. It would also mean that you are imposing 50% of future maintenance costs on your neighbour too.

A party wall is usually part of an overall structure like a house or pair of garages with possibly a shared flat roof.