Construction - Base Brickwork
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The Semi Delivery Bricks
A word of advice...if you are planning on driving a semi-trailer onto your property make sure that you can get it out! This guy was here a few days earlier delivering bricks and was able to turn around. The second time he came back we had bricks and sand in the way! He tried to back out of our driveway but found that it was too slippery to get up the last bit of the drive. Read more about what eventually happened : )
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The Pool Area Coming Together
As the footings at the garage were the high point of the house we had to use more courses at this end. If you have to have a high point try to make sure that it is not your garage. Ask your friendly bricklayer for more information : (
The mismatch of bricks is due to the fact that we are rendering the house. We bought the bricks from Boral for $385 per thousand for mixed commons (only really good for rendering).
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The Front Entrance
This will eventually be the wall that greets you as you walk in the front door. As you can tell we like curves.
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The Garage Footings
This is how our crazy paving footing turned out with bricks. As you can see we have quite a few corners and curves. If you are planning a house with a lot of corners be aware that each one adds to the cost : (
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The Base from the Driveway
This is looking at the house as you are coming down the driveway.
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The Finished Base
The finished base brickwork. It took them a little under two days (with 3 brickies and 1 labourer) to complete.
Now its onto the slab (and drainage) we go...
Tips and Tricks
- Keep an eye on all work whether you are doing it yourself or not. Remember it's your house and you have to be happy with the end result. It's better to pick things up as you go than to have to go back later. The first brick wall that was built was positioned to one side of the pin (by about 60mm). The profile must have been set on the wrong side of the pin. Luckily we noticed and the brickies removed and rebuilt the wall the next day.
- The normal amount of tolerance that a wall can be out is about 10mm. Anything above 20mm is getting a bit on the bodgy side and should be rebuilt. Most of ours ranged from 10-15mm out. This sort of error can be made up easily by the carpenter.
- Use good quality yellow brick layers sand to keep you bricklayer happy : )
- Materials that you will need for this part of the work are;
- Bricks (obviously!) we used 4,600 for our base which is 126lm. This was roughly 18 pallets.
- Bycol - aerates the mortar (20 litres per 10,000 bricks)
- Builders cement (4 bags per 1,000 bricks)
- Yellow or white sand (1 cubic metre per 1,000 bricks)
- Lime (2 bags per 1,000)
- Brick wire ties (50-100)
- Water and possibly electricity. Our bricklayer had a petrol powered cement mixer.
- Make sure you have good access for a semi-trailer or the forklift!
- A safe storage place for the cement, etc. We hired a shipping container for about $20 per week.
- If you have sand left over, cover it to ensure that it doesn't get washed out with the rain.
- By law you also need to provide toilet access for your site. We have hired a toilet for $20 a week.