Brick planters?


  #1  
Old 08-17-02, 04:51 PM
Melissa2002
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Smile Brick planters?

For years I've been interested in building brick planter boxes in our garden. It seems that raising planted areas, even by a foot or so, keeps most weed seeds and grass out and the plants do much better.

So is this the kind of thing I can just do myself?

It seems like I need some concrete for the base edge. How wide and how deep should I make it?

Then I just get the bricks and mortar and go for it?

About how much can I expect all this to cost me, per perimeter foot of what I build?
 
  #2  
Old 08-23-02, 08:10 AM
sc mason
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If your prices are similar to mine, a 16" tall wall 4" deep (a single wall 6 courses high) will run about $3.50 per liniar foot. If you drop it to a little under 12" you can get away with 4 courses and about $2.20 a foot. Includes $250 or so per thousand on the brick, about 8 bags of mortar, and some masonry sand to make the mortar with. This excludes concrete and rebar. For the footer I might suggest just past the freeze line if you have one, if not then 3 or 4" deep with a stick or two of rebar and 6 or 8" wide should be fine. You will not have any load on it with exception of the soil on the inside, so really you just need to keep it from settling or heaving. A bagged readymix concrete from the local store will work depending on the footage. You should be able to get about 4 linear feet at 4"d x 6"w from an 80 lb bag (which I think is .75 cubic feet). Well, hope this helped. One more hint, get enough solid brick to do the last course of your planters so you don't have the holes showing from the standard brick. Also, set up something on each end of the wall to mark (masons modular ruler) off your courses on (make sure they are level from one end to the other or your planter will not be level) and pull a string from (an 8x8x16 block plumbed and leveled works fine), lay your brick to the line moving the line up for each course.
 
 

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