28 May, 2009
This was the scene last November when a car skidded on black ice on a bend next to the croft, spun and hit the drystone dyke that extends between the house and the outbuildings. The dyke dates to the 1950s, but parts of it were almost certainly reclaimed from earlier walls and features as it includes hitching stones (ie stones with rings set into them for tying up horses), rick stones (use to keep rats out of hay ricks), and dressed stone from mortared stonework. In other words, it’s a typical rubble or consumption dyke that uses whatever stone was to hand. When it was damaged, we had to find a drystone waller who could work with rubble as it requires a higher level of skill than working with quarried stone.
We eventually tracked down two drystone wallers prepared to tackle the task—most are like builders in that they don’t want to do small jobs—and we opted for the more experienced of them. S started work on Tuesday morning, clearing away the toppled stone, removing the stone from the damaged section, and then building it up again.
By the time S finished work on Tuesday, he’d rebuilt a four-metre long, 1.5-metre wide section of dyke to almost two-thirds of its original height. Most of the stone pulled from the damaged section was quite poor quality, so S was pleased that I said he could help himself to my stone “collection”. (I’ve been collecting stone from around the croft for the past five years so that it can be used to build new dykes.) Having an assortment of larger and better stones to work with meant the job could be done more easily, while also making the finished dyke stronger.
S returned on Wednesday to complete the job and had it all done by lunchtime, which is quite impressive given the amount of stone to be first removed and then rebuilt in that section. Even more impressive was the quality of the work—the repaired section is stunning to look at and enormously solid while retaining all the character of the older sections. In fact, the new section is actually much better than the original.
“Wow! None of the stones move.” Yes, the dyke even passed the small boy test. S said he would have liked to have rebuilt the entire dyke, and we’d certainly have liked him to do so too, but money doesn’t permit. We were quite lucky with this repair as the car insurer was quite prompt in settling the claim and accepted the cost without dispute. I only wish the same could be said about the insurer that still hasn’t coughed up for repairs to our damaged cottage. Anyway, if we ever find a few grand lying around for stonework, I know exactly who we’ll be using to build dykes around the croft.
They made a good job of that
Do they have a cost per metre for rubble walls, Stoney? looking at that lovely job has made me realise I should stop my pathetic efforts at rebuilding ours and get a professional in!
There are a huge number of variables in the cost: the skill and experience of the waller, the type of stone, whether the stone is on site and easily accessible, what the lie of the land is, the desired quality of the wall, and so on. Price is often per square metre, but the amount of stone used is per cubic metre.
Generally, I’ve found you’re looking at £25 per square metre for a straightforward job on good terrain with good stone to hand and a reasonably experienced waller. If you want a very experienced master craftsman to build a high-quality wall, with features such as arches, on difficult terrain or using difficult stone, then you can look at at going well past £70 per square metre.
You also have to factor in the cost of stone unless you have founds on site, and possibly earthworks to prepare a foundation.
The repaired section of dyke was 4 x 1.5 x 1.2 metres, or 7.2 cubic metres of stone. That means S had to remove 7-7.5 tonnes of stone down to the footings, sort and lay the stone out, then rebuild the wall. He also had to sort through our stone piles to find the extra stone he needed.
So, in two days S shifted something like 15 tonnes of stone to build six square metres of wall, which worked out at £68 per square metre. It was more expensive because of the thickness of the wall, which is half as thick again at the base as a conventional drystone wall, and the type of the stone. A narrower wall using roughly squared stone would have been cheaper—but not looked as good in my opinion.
The chap where I live charges between £100-£150 a metre dependant on travel, and he may charge more for travel it’s over a certain distant…think that’s the quote I got for you anyway Stoney.
That’s about the same as the waller we used: £100 per metre is much the same as the £68 per square metre we were charged. The first would have worked out at £400, the latter cost £410.
the chap here is a very experienced master craftsman and well respected in his stone-waller association too.
His association maybe doing one of my walls for a cuppa and cake for practise at some stage.
Lovely wall. We live in an area with many old (by US standards) fieldstone walls around old pastures and fields. It’s hard to tell whether they were ever as well made as yours now is. If so, they haven’t been kept up. My guess is the old Pennsylvania Dutch farmers, with many other pressing concerns on their minds, just pulled the stones from the rocky soil and dumped them where they wanted borders. Many old homes in this area are fieldstone construction as well. Sadly, the soil on our little residential plot was cleared so long ago that we have very few large stones left. (Our home was once a farmhouse, but the land that belonged to it has been “developed.”) So if we started a rock collection, it probably would never amount to much.
This is part of my collection of stone…
thanks v much for the info, it gives me something to start saving up for! we are lucky in that we have approx plenty of land but less lucky as all of it is dyked and fenced, and every inch of every dyke and every fence needs major repair…..we have been dodging the issue using electric fence in the meantime, only fencing 1 four acre field to date.
The walls at the new BP office cost £250,000 to put in. Team came up from ayrshire as nobody in north east would tackle it.
Hey Stonehead,
Nicely done ! Did the builder use string or a straight edge to keep in line with the old stone wall, or was it all done by eye ?
Does the growth on top get encouraged by you, or does that happen on its own? Sedums?
Time to light a fire under the insurance company regarding the cottage. Perhaps an enquiry as to whether they cover the loss of income for your summer B&B, or if they will pay hotel bills for your visiting relatives….
cheers
He did it all by eye. The growth happens on its own—elsewhere on the croft you can’t see the dykes at all.
As for insurance companies, most are worse than useless with the insurer for the driver that hit the cottage being one of the worst. We send letters, get no response, phone and are told the claim handler has left so everything has to start again, we send more letters, the insurer denies receiving them, months pass so we have to get new quotations for the work, there’s more quibbling, more staff changes, more loss of paperwork, and more lack of response. More months pass and the quote lapse again. And so it goes on and on and on.
Another example is the insurer that’s supposed to be paying out for the oil that was stolen. I had a phone call yesterday from the new claims handler, yes, the previous one left. The new one wasn’t aware of a letter that his company had sent me, but wasn’t aware that they hadn’t sent the claim form—even though I’ve phoned several times to ask where it was.
And then there’s the Motor Insurer’s Bureau that’s supposed to be dealing with the claim for the injuries I suffered when knocked off my bike by a hit-run driver. Almost two years have passed and I’m still getting nowhere.
They can’t all be totally incompetent, so my suspicion is that most of the hassle is a deliberate ploy to fob people off and make them give up, thus saving money.
what a great piece of work, its reassuring that dry stane dyking is still a truly living skill….
Looks like a cracking piece of work
Make a complaint to the insurance company and then if they do not give you a response tell them you want to contact the ombudsman. It cost them £500 for every complaint that is investigated by them so they seem to suddenly sort things out once you mention them. Keep copies of every letter and send them recorded mail and then there is no dispute if they recieved them. Have been there with a dispute over repairs to my car.
Do you not have an insurance ombudsman in Scotland. There is a well known animal insurer that no vet practice willingly deals with and the only way to get them to pay is tell them you are contacting the ombudsman suddenly the money appears.
beautiful work.
The “Insurance Fraud Experts” are without a doubt the wood-ticks who work in the pending claims department. They use an international language. In any claims that I have presented to insurance companies, Canadian claims officers have attempted to stall me with the ubiquitous phrase, “The previous claims officer has left the firm.” Evidently they have no filing system, claims managers, continuity plan, or succession planning in their version of the corporate world.
They, the claims officers, are perpetrating insurance fraud with each and every delaying tactic they employ.
Run, don’t walk, to your Insurance Ombudsman, in hope that they may recognize the fraudulent and disgraceful service offered by the Insurance agency.
Cheers, from Canada,
David