If you are looking to enclose your yard or your sheep pen the way the Welsh do, you are probably looking at constructing a brick wall fence. This is most assuredly a very solid way of creating a fence that cannot be knocked over over badly damaged in a wind storm. Whether you hire a fence contractor or you do most of the work yourself, you may want to know more about the process of constructing a brick wall fence and reinforcing it, from start to finish.

Selecting Your Bricks

There are three kinds of brick you can use to construct your fence walls. If you want the look of large bricks, use cinder blocks. If you want a medium brick look, there are some smaller bricks with hollowed-out holes in the middle of each brick. If you want the traditional red brick walls, you can use traditional red bricks, which will require twice as many bricks (and you will see why shortly).

Rebar or Not to Rebar

If you choose cinder blocks or the medium industrial bricks, you will need rebar to reinforce the wall. If you use the red bricks, rebar is optional. Whichever you choose, make sure you buy enough rebar for your entire fence.

Starting with a Flat Base, Building Up and Finishing the Top

Some people choose to level the ground and then layer bricks across the strip without putting down a layer of cement first. However, if you want to make the wall really secure, use a cement box form to pour a base first, then layer your first layer of bricks right on top of the wet cement. Next, lay your bricks according to the following types and models.

• Cinder blocks and industrial bricks only need to be single-brick wide. Since you will thread rebar through the openings or holes in the middle and then fill in these openings or holes around the rebar with cement, these bricks/blocks will be adequately reinforced.
• With red bricks, you will need to build a double wall with a channel between them that is approximately the width of a single brick turned sideways (i.e., the length of a brick). Be sure to completely close off the starting end and the finishing end of each section of wall with more bricks, as you will be filling the channel completely with wet concrete.

Once you have a brick wall fence that is as high as the top of the upright rebars in the middle (or at least waist high if you are working with red brick), level off the top of the wall. This is done by adding a final, thin layer of cement and using the mason's trowel to smooth it straight across and all the way down the full length of the wall. Contact a fence contractor, like Citi Fence and Concrete, for more help.