Construction Technique

EDIT: I've noticed this article has risen though the ranks of Google searches. This is only part of a Blog and there is much more information available if you view the main Blog for this article. There are owner built castles, stoneworking links, castle builders in the US, and a host of other links that have to do with building your own modern castle. Otherwise, this blog is musings of my own quest to build a castle someday as well as what I've learned along the way.

On to the original article:

Slipform method.

More information on using the slipform method to build stone walls. The slipform method doesn't appear to give you the tightly packed stone look for a wall, but from reading and viewing as many pictures as I could, I guess it depends on how you lay the stone and mortar. The slipform method is a perfectly acceptable method of building a castle wall once the necessary code and engineering factors have been followed, such as wall thickness and reinforcing measures. Our state has the building codes online, and after only a few minutes I was able to find that a stone and mortar wall would need to be 16" thick. The code does have information on reinforced cement as well as insulated concrete forms (ICF) as well; I'd be curious to see what would be necessary to put a stone "veneer" on an ICF wall or other construction methods and have it pass code. The other question that comes to mind is the amount of work that needs to be done beyond just the wall. What sort of additional structural work needs to be done? What sort of framing is necessary to support a second or third floor? How will the base thickness have to be adjusted for wall height? If using ICF, will a builder have to basically stick-frame the structure inside of the ICF, essentially building the walls twice, to create a multi story building? So many questions, so few good resources... If we actually get around to building something ourselves, authoring a book on the process may also be in the works.

At any rate, here is an example of slipform being used to rebuild a section of basement wall. The author cites Tomm Stanley as a good source of information on using the slipform method; Tomm S. also has a book on using the slipform method.