Subject: Mortar mix for sandstone copings
From: Jerry Built
Date: 11/08/04 09:16 GMT Daylight Time
Message-id:

Peter Morrill wrote:
I have just finished a brick wall around my front garden. I
have ordered some natural sandstone copings, with wrought
iron railings to go on top.

How are the railings to be fixed?


Could anyone please advise me on the best mortar mix (and any
other hints) to lay the sandstone on top of the brickwork.

What sort of sandstone is it?


Being on a main road with heavy pedestrian traffic, I want the
copings to be secure.

What! Thay're going to steal them??

People (well drunken layabout chavs anyway) pull them off for fun, especially
at chucking out time. I have a double thickness brick wall 1 metre high along
my pavement frontage and every ten feet there's a pillar 15" square with a
coping on top. I'd regularly find one or more lying on the lawn on Saturday and
Sunday mornings. Although my street is all private houses and quite posh
there's a council estate just past the far end of it and it's the main route
between there and the local pubs. Wish I'd known that before I bought the
place. One day there was half a pillar lying on the lawn with the coping still
attached. They'd tried to pull it off but the mortar had actually failed about
4 brick courses down so there was this lump weighing the best part of 1cwt
buried in the grass.

Over time I lost every bloody coping so I had them all reattached and planted
Leylandii a couple of feet from the wall. Now those have grown up and over the
wall so they protect the copings and no one has bothered with them since. They
also stop kids running up and down on the wall which was another reason the
copings came loose.

No idea what mortar mix the guy used though but I asked him to make it as
strong as possible given the existing vandal problem and it certainly stuck
them down solidly enough.
--
Dave Baker - Puma Race Engines (www.pumaracing.co.uk)