Building New Brick Wall Pier Cap Design
Stu designs and builds a new brick pier cap on a garden wall. How a pier is finished properly, why the cap matters, and what a homeowner should expect from a finished pier.
This is the most-watched video on the channel. Stu is building a brick wall and shows how he designed and built a new cap detail for the piers, the brick pillars that break up a run of wall and give it strength. A pier cap is the finishing piece on top: it sheds water off the pier, protects the brickwork underneath from frost, and it’s the part everyone’s eye goes to first.
The video follows the cap being set out and laid, course by course. The interest is in the detail work: keeping the cap square and level in both directions, getting the overhang consistent on every side, and keeping joints tight and clean where they’ll be seen close up. It’s a good watch for anyone who wants to see how much care goes into a small feature that could easily have been a plain concrete cap.
Who this is for: bricklayers looking for a pier cap idea beyond the standard concrete cap, and homeowners planning a garden wall with piers who want to see what the finishing detail can look like.
What a homeowner should expect from a good job: piers plumb and the same height as each other, caps level with an even overhang all the way round, joints full and neatly finished, and a cap that sits proud enough to throw water clear of the brickwork below. If the caps are uneven from one pier to the next, or the overhang differs from side to side, it’s been rushed. A pier cap is small, but it’s the part of a wall people notice from the pavement.
