Learning curve.

Yeah. In my case it is darn near a circle.

Dave, the spiral really looked cool, and I could easily imagine it lush and green with herbs growing in it, too bad you have to redo it. If at first you don't succeed....

Dave, can you use re-bar to brace it??? I thought it was a beautiful shape. Can you take a picture from a higer place to let us see how it looks?????

Ridesredmule said:Dave, can you use re-bar to brace it???

Not without taking it apart.

Anyway, it'll be better mortared.

Here's a photo of the worst part:


And we begin anew:


You can see we're building it right next to the old one. The new location is much better.

This is a dead level area that we worked with forever to finally get it perfectly level. I think it's going to be great.

do you think it was the lack of level that made the bricks shift

No, I was quite happy with the level of the project. It was the weight of the soil that did it.

The downward pressure caused the walls to bulge outward in all directions.

You will make it work Dave. Looking good already. Just going to move it from one spot to the other???

Yes, we're rebuilding it almost right next to where it is right now. Trish thought it would be better there anyway.

Today we leveled out the site, dug the footers, laid out rebar and actually poured the concrete. So I now have a nice foundation ready for bricks and mortar. I may work on it tomorrow.... we'll see. But for sure, this just turned into a "longer term" project.

Things turn out like that sometimes... You start out thinking "simple" and it suddenly changes into a real project.
But, just think of how great it is going to be..

It's such a beautiful element that it is well worth redoing so that it will last and be a permanent feature!

It's always frustrating to start over again, but not discouraging!

Since it was so great the first time , it will be even better this time...

Ridesredmule said:Since it was so great the first time , it will be even better this time...

Yep!

The first build was great, 1.1 will be AWEsome.

Can you slope the walls in a little bit as it rises? Maybe just the lowest course or two?

Then, if it settles, and if the middle bulges more than the bottom, it will only tilt itself to be straight up-and-down.

Or I wonder if it would help to give each level a few days to settle and stabilize before adding the weight of the next level. That way, if one level spread, you might still be able to tap those bricks back into place, if the weight above them was small enough.

I never thought of a multi-level spiral!
A multi-level wedding cake, maybe, but I'm not that ambitious.

I HAVE made multi tiered wedding cakes. And you haven't lived until the day of the wedding you watch frosting flowers slowly sliding down the cream cheese frosting. lol. I put a toothpick under each flower to keep them in place. that was after stepping out the back door to take deep breaths before I passed out from panic.

Oy.

To avoid mortaring, how about lining the spiral with vinyl siding. There is lots of it around here put out for the city trash where=ever someone is putting new siding on their house. Alternatively you could use old tin roofing if you find a stash of it.

Could do that. But I'm sticking with brick this time.

And good news! Today I mortared down the first course of bricks. There is a definite learning curve to bricklaying but I feel like I'm getting the knack of it. It's looking pretty nice so far if I do say so myself.

Absolutely LOVE the design and now you're a brick mason

Go Dave go!

Now just think if this were pre-digital cameras there would be 200 photos wasted but now all you have to do is delete them. Unlesssss you want to do a "how NOT to do it tutorial" in addition.