A guy down the block from me was replacing a 3-4Â tall limestone wall with the engineered blocks. I stopped and asked if he has somewhere to go with the old rocks and luckily he didnÂt. so now I have a bunch of limestone rocks to play with!

I was thinking of building a drystack retaining wall at the edge of my lot where there is a small hill going up to the neighbors driveway. At its tallest point it is only 24" tall. I figure with a little slop it will only by about 22" tall with most of the wall ranging from 18" Â 20". If I were to do the full length I could make the wall 135Â. But I donÂt think I have enough stone so I may end up with only 75-80Â.

The rocks are pretty irregular (see pics) so stacking will be fun, but together they were a wall once before, I should be able to make a wall again.

My original plan was this Â

Dig back into the hill a little ways,

Dig a trench and fill with sand for a base leaving enough depth for the first row to be slightly below grade

Back fill with gravel, drain tile, gravel, fabric, top soil and grass seed

Enjoy

My questions are the following.

1. Any idea how to judge the length of wall I will get out of these rocks? The previous wall was about 70Â long but varied in height from 1-4Â. Based on what my truck can haul and the number of trips I guess I have about 4.5 Â 5 tons.

2. Given the short height of the wall and the porousness of the rock, is gravel and drain tile necessary behind the wall?

3. Again given the shortness of the wall is a sand base necessary?

4. Would you recommend any mortar at all or just go drystack?

5. If I plan to fill in front of the wall with a flower bed is it necessary to dig down for the first row.

6. Would you suggest doing a Roman style stack wall like this? I kind of like that idea because it gives me room to easily add plants between the rocks like there were in the previous wall - I saw this link in another post -http://www.vcstone.com/stackroman.html

7. Anything else I should consider?

Thanks for the help

Tony

Here is a link that might be useful: My rock pics