Understanding Boulder Wall Patterns

show you in just a minute I think this is a great place for us to jump in here and talk about pattern because you've got to have a pattern in mind before you start now there's three different patterns but two are very typical one is the basket weave the other is the random pattern the basket weave pattern is a very modular design it's very similar to laying bricks one of the keys to having a successful Boulder retaining wall is to never get this space from one brick to the other resting directly on the brick below it you always want to have these spaces overlapping that gives you better strength for instance you don't want this brick lining up directly with the brick below it so the basket weave pattern does require you to have very regularly sized boulders to accomplish it now the random pattern takes more skill to pull it off and to make it look good a lot of guys think they can do a random pattern and really what they do is they just throw everything against the wall and go that's random and hope it looks good when in reality it's not a good random Boulder wall will have a flat face and flat tops still so that you can see clear lines but all of the boulders themselves will fit snugly together you can see where this would take a lot more time to pull it off now a third pattern is by marrying the two together the simplest way to do that is to start with a basket weave pattern and then occasionally throw in a random stone and this random stone that you're throwing in throws the pattern off enough that you can pull it off to make it almost look like a random pattern when in reality it's not very random oh well see now we wouldn't want to do this because we've got two spaces lined up where in reality it's not random at all it's calculated you calculate you do the basket weave you throw in a random stone and then you start all over again with the basket weave again now one of two