The easy way to lay conmcrete blocks.

[Tim Streater]

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Tim Streater writes

I hope they are planning some expansion joints for that length of wall!

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[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

I know one should not laugh, but at the bottom of my road, which is a steep hill, the front gardens are very very steep and mostly lawn. The walls built when the houses were built, curve inwards so that the pressure of the wet earth actually strengthens them, and there are reinforced pillars at the end of each section. So, the guy on the corner wanted somewhere at the front to park his car, so he removed part of the wall, and dug out a level area and concreted it, but the walls around the three sides he mad just vertical and flat, with a set of steps at one end to get to his front door. Five years down the line, his walls are showing the signs of cracking up at the sides. How unsurprising. Not only that but according to the local grapevine since he did this mod, there is early sing of subsidence on the block of four terraced houses, so his neighbours are not best pleased either. Across the road where a similar problem exists, the wall is flat and fell over a few years ago and now there is a kind of terraced look to the front gardens too, presumably to reduce the pressure on the new wall. I do often think that learned best practice and why certain things are done the way they are has been lost somewhere. Brian