Retaining Wall
Cap Bricks and Lights

About the Photo Sequence
I've been procrfastinating this job for a long time. Life seems to get in the way. So, to finish this job, I placed the cap bricks. To make it unique, I added solar lights, matching the ones I used on the east and west wood fences. This documents the build, the final step.


  
Photo Details
This photo sequence contains 14 frames. Each landscape frame is a finite 1366 pixels wide but height was left to its own based on the crop. I based the picture size on an email program's display window asuming that the picture would not be automatically resized to fit. This technique kept the file size down, the largest being 1037k making it easy to send and receive through email. All photos were taken with a Nikon D810.

Download Photo Project


2021-08-RetWallCapBricks.zip - 10845053 bytes.


Retaining Wall
Cap Bricks and Lights

The lights were designed to fit into a 3/4" pipe, supplied with the lights.
My design is to mount a 3/4" EMT conduit pipe into the block wall, and flush with the top of the cap brick.
So I drilled the pilot hole with the masonry bit, then the hole cutting bit marked the circle in the brick.


Next step is to drill eight more holes on the inner edge of the circle.


Then, chisel it out to make the hole.
The result is an almost perfect circle in the brick to be filled with the pipe and morter.


In place.


First row is completed. With summer temps above 100°, I'll place no more than 4 cap bricks a day.


Next row. The plastic connectors supplied with the lamps are in place, in the EMT pipes.


Next row, but took 3 days in this heat.
Yeah, look at the gap between the last two bricks.
I can fix that by cutting and replacing the bricks. Some day...


Again, three days at 4 bricks per day. The last one was a challenge.


I had to cut one brick in half. I don't have a masonry saw blade.
I picked out an old, non-carbide tipped 10" blade and started
cutting ~1/64" per swipe, knowing I'd destroy the blade.


It worked fine!


I decided I didn't want the lights standing up high over the cap bricks,
so I mounted the clear plastic piece directly into the EMT conduit.
A little glue, and it's in there solid.


Looks good in the daylight.


Here's the whole area, at night: