Greetings, dear self-builders and professionals!
Probably, every owner of his house would like to see any reliable structure on his site, be it a house, a fence, a garage or even a gazebo. This is a normal master's desire, because you absolutely do not want to undergo repairs again in 2-3 years, you need to do and forget this for 10 years, or even more!
And my desire is no exception. I analyzed an incredibly many options, considered a brick, just metal supports based on a profile pipe, natural stone, backfill brick with facade panels for stone, ordinary concrete with plaster and several others options.
And still he stopped at a natural rubble stone. In our quarry, the price for it depends on the fraction and averages about 900 rubles per ton. I bought a fraction of 100-300 for 850 rubles per ton. This fraction means that the smallest stone is 10 cm in diameter and the largest is 30 cm.
What I love about this stone is its vintage toughness. Unlike concrete M200 or brick M100, rubble stone has a limit of resistance to impact for compression - 800 kg / sq.cm, which means that this stone is 4 times stronger than concrete and 8 times stronger bricks. Together with a good foundation and strong masonry mortar, the fence will stand for a very long time! It is a truly reliable solution and relatively inexpensive. It took me only 1.5 tons of stone and 7 bags of cement for 3 stone pillars, I did everything myself.
At the end of the article, I will make a link to a video clip, where I fully describe the masonry process, features and share my personal experience.
The foundation is made columnar, but all the pillars are connected by a shallow monolithic tape, inside which there are 4 reinforcement rods with a diameter of 10 mm. The pillar goes 90 cm deep with a freezing depth in our region of 86 cm, and the depth of the tape connecting the pillars is 40 cm.
After the foundation was poured, I waited a little less than a week, primed the metal, laid waterproofing on the concrete and started laying.
One stone post took 2 days. In the process of work, he adjusted stones, sometimes he used a pickaxe to grind off any edge. He beat off the vertical with a plumb line, and cleaned the seams with a metal brush with a hard bristle and smoothed the seams with a soft wallpaper brush at the finishing stage.
He deliberately deepened the seams by 3-5 cm in order to give a relief to the structure and highlight the stone edges.
A week later, all 3 pillars were ready! Inside the stone pillar, there is a profile pipe, poured into the foundation; along the edges of the pillar, there are also metal pipes (as mortgages) for fastening future gates and wickets.
The pillars will hold the new gate, and during their construction I had to retreat from the old gate 30 cm towards my yard, otherwise I would have broken the red line along the facade.
This is the final look that came out in the end. The plans for the next construction season are to finish the fence along the facade, which means that 4 such posts still need to be made.
When laying, I used a conventional cement-sand mortar in a ratio of 1: 3. The solution was specially made hard with a water deficit, since the stone, unlike the brick, does not take water due to the cast structure, and therefore the solution remains hard, but plastic for a long time.
I believe that natural stone is a great and, moreover, inexpensive solution with a huge service life, plus everything - beautiful! Nature is nature! Not every material can boast of such properties!
I don't know why there are very few such fences, but in my opinion, the stone looks much more interesting than ordinary brick. Okay, I did it quite inexpensively due to the fact that I did the work myself, but even if I have to hire craftsmen, then it will work out and the price of a stone pillar will not differ much from a brick one... The stone itself is cheaper than the brick!
As promised, I am attaching a video below.
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Thank you for your attention, good luck and kindness!