# Forum Home Renovation Brickwork  Besser block fence - DIY-able?

## Matto-FNQ

Hi there, 
First time poster - long time lurker. I have a question that I believe I already know the answer to, but thought I'd ask anyway, in case there's some other things I hadn't considered. Please keep in mind though that I've nowhere near the average skill level that everyone here seems to have! 
Our house is made out of besser-blocks, as they stand up to cyclones well and have good heat insulative properties. It also means that I never have problems hanging a picture  :Biggrin:  (stud-finder? why would I need one of them?). To keep the general theme and materials consistant throughout the house, I'd like to replace our front fence with a besser-block wall, eventually having it rendered along with the rest of the house. 
We currently have a timber paling fence that comes down the left side of the block to level with the front of the house, then comes across the face of the block to meet the front corner of the house. The front section is approx 7-8m long, and includes a double gate for car access. The timber fence is old and in a bad state of repair - the gate posts have sagged such that it's a real pain to open the gate now. Talking to our neighbour the other week, he's keen to replace the entire side fence, as it is in a similar condition.  
What I would ideally like to do is turn the front corner of the back yard into a courtyard, by replacing front fence with a besser-block wall and solid gates (was thinking blue-board on a steel frame?), and then continuing the block wall down the side fence for a similar 5-7m. From the front of the house, this would look simply like the front fence is a continuation of the front wall of the house. From inside, it would be a nice private courtyard that we could then concrete/pave, and eventually build a roof over to give a nice covered outdoor entertaining area.  
The complicating factor is that currently the land slopes away from the house and toward the street slightly. This means that the front corner of our imaginary courtyard slopes down and away. It's not huge - probably only about 30-40cm at the maximum - but it's something that I'd like to avoid. So, the plan changes to include a small retaining wall first to bring that corner up to level with the rest of the yard, and then the wall/fence on top of this. Because we're using besser-bricks, this should be a simple matter of just building the wall at the right height the whole way across, then back-filling into the corner inside the courtyard. 
The first complication is that from the outside, looking at the corner of the fence/wall, the height of it will be 180cm of wall, plus the (let's say worst case scenario of) 40cm of retaining wall, giving a total height of 220cm. Which, I think, would be outside council regulations. My understanding was that even in this situation (a fence on top of a retaining wall), the top of the fence couldn't be more than 180cm from any ground level. However, with a friend's house, because of the slope of the land, down one boundry he has a 2m retaining wall, topped with a 1.8m pailing fence. 
I know this would be largely dependent on the actual council regulations, but are there any general guidelines about whether this would be OK or not? FWIW, the neighbour has indicated that they wouldn't have a problem with the extra height (and privacy it affords) at all. 
The second complication is that althought I originally thought this could be a cheap and quick DIY project I could tackle myself, I'm starting to believe that it will be anything but. I've never done any blockwork before, but have handy family members willing to assist. My fear is that we will spend all this money and time building such a wall, only to end up with something that's unsafe. Obviously I'd like it to look schmick, but even if it looks a bit rough I wouldn't mind - it's the safety thing that's concerning me. I'd hate to have it fall down in 5 years time on top of someone. Add in to the mix the cyclones that we get up here, and I'm not confident that I'd know the tricks and rules for building such a structure, and keeping it nice and safe and solid. 
So - my question to Those Of You Know Know These Things - is this a (relateively) straight-forward project that I'm just overthinking, or is it something better left to the professionals?  
I'm not a builder, but I don't mind having a go myself, especially if I can save some money and learn some new skills along the way. But I'm just concerned about the safety aspect of the finished job.  
So - any suggestions/recommendations from people who have experience in this sort of thing? I've attached a quick Sketchup mock up of the desired outcome to (hopefully) make it a bit clearer. It's roughly to scale - not measured with a micrometer, but with enough attention paid to the measureing tape to be reasonably accurate.  
Thoughts? 
Thanks for the help!
Matto  :Smilie:

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## Ronaldo451

Matto, 
I am also a keen amateur, but shy away from brick/blockwork that requires a tradesman's skill to make and keep it safe. Usually I take the worst case scenario if it all goes wrong to judge if its something I am willing to take on and so draw the line at probably 600-700mm high masonary - and that only in small sections.  
Above that height it goes from being possibly injurous if you/family member don't get out of the way in the unlikely event it falls over, to maybe fatal if you/family member don't get out of the way in the possible event it falls over (as I reckon the higher it gets the 'more possible' it gets to be unstable). 
That said, have you thought about a lightweight fence that could be rendered to give the effect of a solid block wall. I have a courtyard fence on the list of things to get around to sometimes and am comtemplating a double sided blue board wall hung from steel posts and top hats - when rendered it looks solid but is cheaper, easier and less of a safety worry than solid masonary. Not sure how it would stand up to cyclones though....

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## Matto-FNQ

Hi Ronaldo, 
Thanks for your help. My thinking lately has been along much the same lines as yours - if it's not built properly, then it's likely to be a safety risk, and as such just not worth the possible consequences. Given that you tend to think down the same lines, I think that's just confirmed my decision. 
I hadn't actually thought about a lightweight fake-masonry wall though, but on reflection it sounds like a much better option. My plan was to render the blocks eventually anyway, so it doesn't really matter what's underneath. I assume that rendering blue board is possible/a good idea?  
With your plans, were you going to build a full steel frame and attach the blue-board to that, or just have the steel posts with the blue-board attached on it's sides, and self-supporting along the length? As you can no doubt gather, I've never worked with blue board, and my knowledge of basic building supplies (such as whatever a top-hat is!!!) is basically non-existant! I'm thinking of a fully-welded steel frame (50x50 gal RHS, or similar) with rails top, middle and bottom (or top and bottom + a cross-brace) in each "panel", but worry that this might be overkill for a simple fence? 
Given the light-weight wall on top, I could probably then manage the retaining wall section myself, since it would be a maximum of 40cm at the deepest point (the corner), and so long as I ensure the drainage aspects are taken care of properly, there's probably not much that could go wrong there. There are enough good web-based resources on how to build a small retaining wall that I should be able to follow.  
As far as cyclones go, the main problem in built-up areas actually is things like sheds and roofs - things that can collect the wind under them and then go flying across the suburb. A fence (that sits lower than the surrounding houses) is actually pretty sheltered from the worst of things. There's certainly a heap of colourbond fences getting around that seem to survive, so if anything, this one should end up heavier and more strongly secured than those. Still - I'll run my idea past a couple of fence shops, and see what they say! 
Thanks for the idea - you've just given me some inspiration!
Matto  :Smilie:

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## Ronaldo451

Matto, 
Tophats are topspan - 6 m lengths of gal with a 'top hat' profile that attach horizontally to screw Blueboard onto.  
If I can master the technology I'll try to show a few pics of the garage wall which I Blueboarded/rendered (rather than Colourbonded, as was used on the other bits you don't see), and a later effort of a blueboard/render wall incorporating a water feature.  
While this was only Blueboarded on one side with the tophats exposed on the side you don't see (hope the pic turns out), I will put tophats and blueboard on both sides when doing a fence - will probably use 100 x 100 gal posts.  
Will be pretty chunky 2x60mm tophat plus 100mm post+ blueboard = approx 240mm thick, but I like the substantial look.

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## Ronaldo451

Not the master of technology Iam afraid..will need to send pics piecemeal.. 
This is a closeup of the textured finish on the render.

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## Ronaldo451

This is the back of the Blueboard showing the tophats (pic on its side, bugger)

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## Ronaldo451

This was my first effort. Its a colorbond garage with rendered Blueboard instead of Colorbond on the side facing the house.

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## autogenous

Have a look at Hebel homefencesystems?  http://www.hebelaustralia.com.au/hom...cesystems.aspx

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## Matto-FNQ

Ronaldo, 
thanks very much for the pics - that's pretty much the exact outcome I was chasing. I can see how you've used the tophat lengths on their side, and that makes a heap of sense. Would be very easy to do as well - stand up the posts, attach the top hat, then clad with the blueboard - nice and easy steps. 
One question - how do you finish the top and ends of the wall? I imagine the blue-board wouldn't be structurally sound enough to simply attach to the tops of the posts and then self-support along the length of the top without sagging? 
Autogenous - I've not reallly had much to do with Hebel systems, but I was speaking to my Dad about the wall last week, and he suggested it based on what he had seen on a Better Homes And gardens, or a blitz show, or something similar. Thanks for the link - I'll check it out! 
Thanks!
Matto  :Smilie:

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## Kaptan

Hi Matto,
Have a look at the Boral Connex blocks.
They are a dry stack besser-block system that you can reinforce with reo-rod and concrete fill. (A lot safer than a conventional brick/block wall).
They interlock both horizontally and vertically, so are very easy to lay.

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## Matto-FNQ

Thanks for the tip Kaptan - I'll have a look into them as well. Have you used them before? Are they expensive? 
Before I go any further, I'd like to thank everyone for their input. Big props go out to Ronaldo for his pictures and explanations, but also to everyone else for their input. It's a great benefit for me to be able to ask questions of such a knowledgable bunch! 
I had a chat to the father in law on the weekend, and he suggested using 100mm gal posts, same as Ronaldo suggested, but then using C-section for the cross beams. Apparently (and I'm probably showing my complete ignorance here) you can get brackets to attach the c-section to the posts, thus keeping the cross-bracing "inside" the width of the gal posts (as opposed to screwing the top hats on the outside of the posts). Once the frame is constructed, you can then clad with blueboard and render as normal.  
This would solve a lot of the problems that I was having with the design of the top-hat-style wall that Ronaldo described. I was having trouble working out how to cover over the top and the ends of the wall. With the internal frame of the C-section, I can simply run the top C-section beam along the very top of wall, and screw the top blueboard piece directly to that. Because it's then supported by the steel for the full width, it won't be able to sag. On the ends I wanted to mount the gates flush with the outside wall. With the top-hat design, I would have had to have hinged off the centre of the wall width, which would have rebated the gates. Not a huge issue, but now I think I can have it exactly as I envisaged. 
There's still a couple of things I need to sort out though: 
1) The gates. I'd them to be a continuation of the wall. So I was going to weld a steel frame, clad it with blueboard both sides, and render it the same as the wall. But then I started thinking as to whether the movement of the gates would cause the render to crack and break away. I'm guessing it would. So - any suggestions? The other thought was to make the gates obviously different, to break up the wall. The idea then was to use horizontal decking timber screwed to the frame. Still undecided. 
2) The retaining wall section, and how it impacts on the posts. In the outside corner (as you can see in the image on my original post) , there's a 400mm retaining wall component, so that the ground is leveled within the new courtyard. On it's own, that's OK. I can do that out of besser blocks. The wall itself, on it's own, is cool too - thanks to everyone's input here I think I've now got it sorted in my mind. 
But where the wall sits on top of the retaining wall, that's got me stumped. With Ronaldo's plan, it wasn't a huge problem. Due to the thickness of the wall, I could have the posts just inside the besser blocks, and the thickness of the wall would take the edge out to cover the top of the besser block. But now with the new slim-line style wall, which is only ~120mm thick total, I'll need a new plan. I thought about setting the posts first, then lifting the besser blocks over the top of the posts and dropping them down with the post going up through the hole in the besser block. But I'm not sure whether that would be a good idea or not.  
Either way, the front corner post is going to need to be (I think) around 3.3m long as it is. That's the 1.8m fence height, plus the 400mm of the retaining wall, plus 1.1m to go into the ground (half the 2.2m that will be sticking out of the ground). That's a big, heavy post to manhandle around, and a deep hole to dig to stick it in. 
I'm not too concerned with the retaining wall section on the front of the wall, since that' just extending into our front yard. But I'd like the boundry fence to be as close as possible to the actual boundry, both to maximise useful courtyard space, as well as asthetics for when the timber fence takes over from the rendered wall. I doubt I'd be able to install any part of the retaining wall on my neighbour's side, as he's:
A) wanting to gain vehicle access to his back yard down this side, and
B) a real stickler for the rules, and reported his other neighbour to the council a couple of weeks ago over a disagreement about their adjoining fence. 
So far I've been playing this project to him as a way for him to get his vehicle access, and so far he's indicated that he's happy about it all. So I need to come up with a way to have this wall sit on top of the retaining wall, so that it looks as if there's just one high wall on his side of the boundry, as opposed to a fence sitting inside and above a retaining wall. I think that setting the posts down through the middle of the besser bricks has merit, but will need careful measuringand thinking about. 
Any A++ ideas for solving this problem???!!! 
Thanks!
Matto  :Smilie:

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