Garden wall fallen over

[Thereman]

Hi, a 6 foot section of garden single skin wall that is about 2 foot high has fallen over backwards into a hedge with no broken bricks and nearly in one piece.

It was built around 1935.

Is there anyway this can be shored back up and made safe without rebuilding it!?

Any advice appreciated.

 

[dontbelieveawordofit]

no

 

[mattylad]

What Benny said.

Get out there, remove all the bricks.
If you want it looking the same then reuse the bricks where you can - rebuild is the only option - but this time you can make it better and so it lasts longer than a mere 95 years.

 

[dontbelieveawordofit]

scary concept though.
a 3ft wall 6ft long could easily kill a little toddler.

 

[cdbe]

If you can clean up the bed and physically get it back on then yes.
A car crashed into my wall many years ago, essentially the wall was demolished into 3 large lumps - we managed to manhandle them all back in place and replace half a dozen cracked bricks with some from the hidden part of the pier. A few months later you couldn't even see the "joins", 10 years later the wall is still standing.

I also moved this big pillar on my current driveway 2 feet to the left by splitting it into 3 pieces and carrying them across.

 

[Thereman]

Wow. That sounds interesting. If I can move it, what would I do next? Sorry I have not done this before. Would I excavate as much as possible and fill in with concrete? I am not sure if there is another line of bricks underneath? Is there a way to attach to them if so?
Any advice appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Notch7]

gripfill

 

[cdbe]

There should be either concrete or more bricks, either way just think of the whole chunk as one big brick, clean it up and re-bed it on to a new bed of mortar (buy a bag of ready mixed from Wickes). My technique is to put the bed of mortar on and place a slightly thicker piece of timber at each end, get the masonry sitting on these in the correct position and carefully remove them so it settles gently onto the mortar - this stops you dragging it off or squeezing it out etc.
The other thing to be aware of is that wall is inherently weak in any case as it seems to be broken up by old timber fence posts - but it's lasted 95 years so far......

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

It's 95 years old, it fell over because it was either poorly designed in the first place or past it's prime, either way propping it up is a recipe for disaster.

 

[dontbelieveawordofit]

crazy

 

[dontbelieveawordofit]

Hi, a 6 foot section of garden single skin wall that is about 2 foot high has fallen over backwards into a hedge with no broken bricks and nearly in one piece.

It was built around 1935.

Is there anyway this can be shored back up and made safe without rebuilding it!?

Any advice appreciated.

youve changed your mind! it was 3 ft.

 

[Thereman]

Yes had a closer look. Does that make a difference to your responses?

 

[dontbelieveawordofit]

personally no. it’s easier to dismantle it clean them up and rebuild it.

 

[Thereman]

BTW the wall was knocked over by a car pushing it over at very low speed.

 

[cdbe]

This is my repaired garden wall 10 years later:

The left hand pier was completely knocked off above the 2 courses of blue bricks together with most of the wall above the blue bricks and left of the bin, with a large diagonal crack rising from behind the bin up to the right hand pier. The piers weren't keyed into the walls other than a few wall ties so they came apart when the car hit rather than snapping more bricks.
It took me, with a bit of help and no bricklaying skills, about 2 hours to repair.

If the OPs wall had merely cracked along the joint and hadn't been pushed off you'd just be advising him to rake out and repoint.