By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine
Rock work can be daunting. What size rocks do you need for landscape construction, for example—and how big a rock can you handle by yourself? The chart below shows coverage and recommended sizes to make a wall. Your experience, strength, and equipment determine how heavy a rock you can safely handle.
For big jobs (walls over 4 feet tall) or anything larger than one-man rock, get professional help and advice. But there are lots of jobs even novices can handle well. Start with something simple, like edging a gravel path in stone.
Because rock is handled in bulk and sold by the ton, every load contains individual rocks that are well above and below the size you paid for. That isn't a bad thing, since larger rocks go on the bottom, and smaller ones on top and in the spaces between larger rocks.
For a given volume, rock weight also varies greatly (think of the differences between pumice and granite, for example). But the chart below, based on rock from Lynch Creek Quarry in Puyallup, Washington, gives useful averages. Among landscapers, the definitions of one-man, two-man, and three-man rock will skew toward the high side of the weights shown here.
From looking at the chart, it's clear that most of us won't be picking up a 250 pound rock any time soon, so "one-man rock" must mean something else, and indeed it does: it's the size rock one person can move into place with a 6- to 8-foot pry bar. The lever is a beautiful thing when it comes to moving rocks around—one that makes you feel considerably stronger than you are. Use it to help roll big rocks along, or to lever them into position.
A two-wheeled garden cart can move rocks better than a wheelbarrow, whose high center of gravity and single wheel makes it unstable and tipsy.
A hand truck (the kind you use to move furniture) is good for one or two heavy rocks, since it has a very low center of gravity. Some tool yards rent a variation on this called a ball cart or basket dolly. It lies flat for loading, then is picked up by the handles and pushed.
Stone sleds were once used for commercial construction, but they have long since been replaced by trucks and heavy equipment. But you can use a snow sled covered by a piece of plywood to accomplish the same thing, dragging it along with heavy nylon rope (but beware: it tears up lawns).
An ancient Egyptian method also works well. Put down parallel rows of poles or pipes, set a plank or square of thick plywood on top of that, and put the heavy rock on top of that. Then you can roll the stone over the poles; it's especially useful in the construction of pyramids.
