New front garden wall

[trevorbayliss]

I have taken down my old front garden wall which was single skin and i will be building a new double skin wall about 6 courses high. It is not a big wall.

The old wall was connected into the column dividing up my wall with my neighbours as we are a semi.

In the photo you can see the wall has a small hole under it where the rain water pipe passes into a metal gully which takes the water through the pavement and into the road.

Do you think i need to retain the first course of brick which is a bridge over the metal gully ?

I was thinking of cutting out the second course brick sticking out, so i could just build my new wall more independently. The column (and my old wall) was leaning outwards a little and so i don't want my new wall to be pulled out over time.

Any thought on what i do here ? Ideally i would like my wall to have a 10mm gap between it and the column, but the drain gully means i have to probably keep the lower bit in the photo.

 

[oldbutnotdead]

Is that an elder near the column? Whatever it is (but particularly if it is one of those big weeds) it is probably root growth that is causing the lean on the column. How level is that foundation that you've exposed? Is it wide enough for a full brick wall? How thick is it? Be aware that at that depth the potential for disturbance by frost and tree roots is very high (unless it is 700mm thick, which I doubt).

 

[trevorbayliss]

Yes the tree roots have pushed the column outwards. It is a mountain ash. A small tree really.

The foundation is my own new one. I dug out the old one which was 100mm deep max. This is 150mm deep. It is wide enough for a my wall which is 230mm wide. My wall height is only 600mm max including the coping. The replaced single skin wall was leaning outwards as well and couldn't take the weight of a little soil behind. 100 yrs old though, so not done too badly.

We don't get that hard a frost in this area, but yes it could have been deeper, but i am a bit sick of digging after doing a lot on the house recently.

I have started the wall today and have tied into the bricks at the base of the pillar.