Tips and Tricks
Check out our list of tradespeople that we used.
- Have a Geotech report done and then talk to other people who have built in your area. Almost everyone in our estate had hit rock during excavation, so we decided to hire an excavator from the very beginning rather than using a front loader. This saved time and therefore money when we then hit rock and had to use hammer equipment.
- We had a reasonable amount of rock that required hammering. Allow for this in your budget as it costs more and slows things down a bit.
- Make sure that the excavator driver makes the site level using a laser level or other equipment. Don't just go by eye alone. In the end we had a 130mm drop across the site. While this doesn't sound much, the high spot was at the garage end. This has meant an average of 2-3 extra courses of bricks on the other end of the house. We now have to backfill this area to level it off.
- If you cut a driveway (ours is 210 metre long) ensure that the excavator shapes the road to allow drainage. Again it looked fine to the eye but after the first rain it was very easy to see where the water sat.
- Book the surveyor for three visits;
- Mark out the footings for excavation
- Check that the footings are in the right spot after excavation (we had to fix quite a few trenches)
- Pin the corners for the brickies after the concrete footings are poured.
- If you think that you will hit rock, ensure that you place some check points away from the footings so that you can check them after the rock comes out!
- Borrow a wire tying tool (not the official name) to tie the trench mesh together. This saved a huge amount of fiddly work and is MUCH faster.
- Double check all your formwork to make sure it won't move during the pour.
- Hire a concrete pump and save yourself a lot of time and effort.
- 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 to store supplies and tools..
- If you have sand left over, cover it to ensure that it doesn't get washed out with the rain. Don't move the sand! You will surely pick up gravel or stones and this will annoy the crap out of your brickies!
- By law you also need to provide toilet access for your site. We have hired a toilet for $20 a week.
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Check all the plumbing measurements. Once the slab is down, making corrections is VERY difficult.
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Hire a plate compacter to compact the fill in the slab.
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Make sure the concreters vibrate the slab - don't be talked out of it no matter how unnecessary they say it is. Vibrating the concrete can help to make up for any inadequacies in the concrete mix.
- Confirm with the concrete supplier the maximum acceptable waiting time between deliveries.
- Cure the slab if you can. It might make the difference in the long term.
- Ensure that your renderer using a PVA bonding agent such as Bondcrete in the mix and on the wall. Just putting it in the mix will make the mix stronger but DOESN'T help it stick to the wall. You need to paint it on the wall if you want it to really stick :)
- Ensure that you cure the render for at least 24 hours by keeping it wet or covering it with plastic. We kept ours wet.
- Cover your windows with plastic and tape! It makes the cleanup easier. Do not let the render dry on the windows as it is almost impossible to get off. If you do get some on the windows, try straight Metho to soften it.
- We would suggest that you do not mix colouring into the render, paint it instead. If you need to re-render a part of the wall you will see the difference. It also fades over time. If the renderer doesn't measure it carefully each time they make a mix (which I can guarantee they won't) you will get different colours.