# Batter me in Texas limestone



## Stryker (Dec 6, 2013)

Asked a TX GC down NW of San Antonio to build per a detail on my stock planset, which shows a battered pier for a portico structure, done with plywood and 2" veneer. Hollow. Cheap. Won't last. I know it won't, cause that is how they did some at the entry to the local CVS Pharmacy, and they are falling apart.

Anyhow, I asked it be done using the local limestone in an ashlar lay, Leuders brownish-gold, and am wondering something.

Straight up is easy. How much tougher is doing it battered, as drawn? Not stepped. Battered.

As you can see in the pics, the plans-sellers detail and my hallucination in Sketchup, which was done to work out the scale for a lower set of piers, there is a 6x6 pressure-treated post in the core.

And with the face of the pier out there, not a tight lay-up to the post, is any core material getting used? Or is the mason just gonna fill inside with rubble.

I show a pic clipped from the GC's website, showing piers, a full and a half, but with the easy plumb sides. Battering takes a little more effort, but how much?


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## CJKarl (Nov 21, 2006)

Can you do it in big slabs?


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

Aside from being crap construction, it will leave the corners as a single joint which will leak with the first rainstorm, as well as look like hammered dog****. Just build the freaking bases out of stone and be done with it.


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## CJKarl (Nov 21, 2006)

http://www.contractortalk.com/f90/wall-street-120311/


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## dom-mas (Nov 26, 2011)

Tscarborough said:


> Just build the freaking bases out of stone and be done with it.


That's what he wants.

It all depends on how straight you want the corners and how tall. 2 or 3' no big deal, 8-10', that gets fussier. Straight as string, no daylight beyween a straight edge and the corner? or rock faced straight, in and out 1/8"? Also if you truly mean ashlar (tight grained stone either margined with a texture or perfectly flat with 1/4" joints) or what some quarries seem to call ashlar (just square stone) which is nothing at all what ashlar is. It's a pretty broad question. I would bid ashlar with zero tolerance @ maybe 5x per foot what I would regular rock faced stone. And if the piers were more than 3' high I'd probably bid 1.5-2x what I would if they were shorter


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

<Rosanna-Rossana-Danna>Nevermind</Rosanna-Rossana-Danna>


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## Stryker (Dec 6, 2013)

I called it "ashlar," but in the Texas hill country, they call it sawn and chopped 4-6-8-10. Some pics attached to show what I am looking for, sort of, including a pic of a battered column base.

And of course, _se habla espanol._


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## JBM (Mar 31, 2011)

I'm not sure what the question is. But I'm sometimes slow...


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## Kniggit (Apr 11, 2013)

Depends on if they taper the corners and faces to the angle or just lean them and angle cut the one next to the corner like I have seen here.

The way we would do it here is out an adjustable shoring post for support and fill with brick, plumb it would probably be hollow.


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## stonecutter (May 13, 2010)

It shouldn't be that much more difficult than a straight line, just a little chisel work on the corners.


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## Willin (Aug 20, 2012)

Thanks. Just what I wanted to know.


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## dom-mas (Nov 26, 2011)

AI would expect to pay maybe 1.5x more than a square column


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