WELCOME TO AFFORDABLE RENTALS BRISBANE

YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. In this blog we will write articles about the Social Security System and those issues, that affects people that rent, and also those that own properties for rent. We hope that our articles will help them understand the situation better. L S H.

Sunday, December 24, 2023

Building a veneer house.

WELCOME TO BRISBANE AFFORDABLE RENTALS, YOU ARE INVITED. In this blog, we will discuss rental problems that we may encounter when renting, and the problems of running affordable rentals. We will also discuss, what the government can do to help the renters pay their rent, and the property owners run a better service to the renting community, instead of blaming the landlords.
Anyhow, we believe that the government Social Security System, can help both the people that are renting and the property owners. They should give more rent assistance to people on low income that are renting, and they should abolish or modify the assets test on active rental properties, if they want the rental market stand on its own, so, to speak. For this reason, we are writing several articles, where we will talk about the rental problems and the Social Security System. 

                                    HOW WE BUILT AFFORDABLE HOUSES THE OLD WAY. 


There are many types of house that we can build. In this blog, we are explaining how we built the brick veneer house. The brick veneer house can be a bit cheaper than a solid brick house, so, it was/is easier to sell, that was one of the reasons they were popular in the seventy. 


Welcome to our article, Building a veneer house

Dear readers, before we write about how we built the brick veneer house in the seventies, we want to point out that today, the price of a house seems to be higher than then. We can say that a new house then, was five times the average annual earning of a working person, but today it can be eight to ten times the annual earning at a working person. So, it is not easy to buy a house. 

Having said that, let us go back to our article, we can say that this is the continuation of our article, “House brick base continues”, but it cannot be said that this is a DIY article for a beginner, since what we are describing here is more advanced. Anyhow, this is how we were building houses during the seventies here in Australia. We must say here, that most houses were built using plain common sense, of course, we are still building them today in the same way, and they will be built for a long time, in some part of the world, where blocks of land are subdivided to build standalone houses, but today even this way of building is becoming old fashion, especially if you are building in a city, where building anything is becoming very specialized, so, if you build anything that needs approval from the local authorities you need a builder an architect and an engineer, or at least you must be a good tradesman  and know how to read their plans, then you might be able to build a small house, by yourself.  

Anyhow, this article is for those people that want to know what sort of problems they may encounter, while building a brick-veneer house or even a solid cavity brick house, and how to avoid these building problems, in other words this article can help the owner-builder that wants to know a bit more, because he is going to build his own house. 

So, now that we have built this imaginary brick base in the previous article, House brick base continues, we have the option of using this same style of brick base in a few ways, because this base can be used to build a timber house on the top of it, or it can be used to build a brick veneer house as well, what this means is that we can build brick around the timber frame of the house, so that the house looks like a brick house, but in reality it is both, so, let us see what is the difference and if it affects anything.

Of course, we must start building the house knowing what it is going to be from the start, and this is the reason why we need a plan, you see, we need a plan because we need to know the measurement from the start, because anything we change, changes the measurement, but anyhow the ways of building it is almost the same, accept that the bricks take more space than if the house outside is finished with timber claddings, therefore, this affect the remaining floor space in the house, but apart from that there is no much difference in building the brick base.

Now, there are at least three types of houses being built these days, the timber house, the brick veneer house and the solid brick house. These types of houses can vary as it is possible to mix all these materials together in various amounts. But in this article, we want to write first about a brick veneer house that can be built on a similar brick base that we have completed in the hub, House brick base continues. So, let us describe, how this is done.  

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Building a brick veneer. 

As we have said, the difference in the construction of the base between a timber house and a brick veneer house is not that much, as it affects only the outside of the house and the floor space of the house, if the extra space needed for the bricks is not taken into account at the start. But how we proceed to build these two types of building on a similar brick base is this: If the outside of the house is going to be timber, the outside of the timber bears and the entire timber frame is placed right at the outside edge of the brickwork, but before we do that on top of the brick walls a galvanized ants capping will be fixed, then the timber bears and the house frame. But if it is going to be brick veneer then the reverse happens and the timber bears and frame is set back about 6 inches (150mm) this is to give space for the bricks and leave a cavity between the timber frame and the bricks, the ants capping goes inside or at least under the timber bears.         

Now because we are building a brick veneer house, the carpenters have placed the house frame back to allow for the bricks to be laid outside, in this case the carpenter’s foreman should have instructed his carpenter team to try to work with the bricklayers and set the opening of doors and windows in such a way that helps the bricklayers. Now, let me explain here what are the problems that the bricklayer can encounter if both teams don’t work together. For example, there is a short wall that has a door opening in the centre, if the door opening is placed exactly in the centre, then the bricklayers might have to cut the bricks on both sides of the door to make them fit the length of the remaining wall beside the door opening, this not only will add extra work for the bricklayer, but it can be an eye sore, and therefore, these sort of things should be avoided, wherever they can be avoided. 

So, what can be done one may ask? Well, the door opening can be moved a bit to one side, so that at least one side works to the bricklayer advantage, and if he is lucky both sides can work with a full brick, therefore, no bricks need to be cut shorter to fit in the wall between the door and the corners? This same principle applies in other parts of the brick wall, when there are two openings, the carpenter should move the openings of the windows and door to help the bricklayers, when they can be moved.

The bricklayer working part. 

Now that we have explained what the variations for the carpenter are, when he sets up the timber frame for the brick veneer, we come to the bricklayer part and what he does when he works on a brick veneer house, because there are many other demanding things to do in between while he is laying bricks; these other things need to be done as well, if the house is going to be well built.   

Apart laying bricks as usual, the fist other job that the bricklayer may encounter is that he has to place lintels over the opening of doors and windows of the brick base, if they happen to be at that level and most time they are, these lintels for brickwork can be steel angles that span over the openings, they come in various size and they are used according to the span they have to bridge. So, when there are openings in the base, the bricklayer places this steel angle over the openings and then lays the bricks over them making sure that everything looks and is okay, he has also to lay some brick reinforcement in next course of bricks above the openings, or even all around the brick base, this reinforcement is in the form of a light galvanized mesh as we have explained in our previous articles.

But this is not all, because in some cases when it is specified he may have to nail the rat-proof wire (this is a wire mesh with holes too small for a rat to go through), so, the bricklayer first of all nails one side to the timber frame and the other side is laid in the joint of the bricks, thus a barrier is formed and no rat can enter into the cavity between the bricks and the timber frame. But that is not all, because there can be the need to lay a dampcourse, this again is like the rat-proof wire, one end is nailed to the timber frame and the other end is laid in the brick joints. 

At least this is how it was done when we were building brick veneer houses or apartments in the sixties and seventies; so, we had this problem there to solve while we were laying bricks, I guess that at this point of time one can even ask, but if the bricklayer has to do all these extra small jobs, how and when he is going to lay bricks? These jobs should really be done from somebody else and let the bricklayer do his job and lay his bricks. Having said that we have to agree that those small jobs should be done from a different person, but there is a problem there also; those jobs need to be done when the wall reaches a certain height, so, it is very hard to have somebody there that would do that job for us bricklayers. So, we were forced to do it ourselves whether at the end we were compensated or not. You see, this is one of the main reasons why when we work on a brick veneer the bricklayer lays a lot less bricks per day than he usually does on a normal wall, but there are more annoying things for the bricklayers to do, as we will write here under.

Other things that the bricklayer does. 

We have mentioned many things but there is more to say here, sometimes before we even start to lay bricks in the veneer part of the house, we bricklayers need to nail a special building paper, this paper is another layer of insulating material that is nailed on the outside of the timber studs that form the external timber frame; in reality it is the carpenters that should do this work, and if they are around, once we have built the scaffolding to lay our bricks, the carpenters are very likely to jump in and nail this insulation paper for us, but it is likely that the bricklayers have to do it themselves.

Other things that we need to do while laying bricks on the brick veneer, we need to nail to the timber studs brick veneer ties every three or four courses of bricks; These are L shaped brackets that attach the timber frame to the brick wall, we have to lay this wire reinforcement every so often, we have to nail the damp course under and above openings and other things that need to be done before we lay bricks.

Once we finish building our veneer walls, most likely the last job is to lay these bricks for the windowsills. The windowsills take a lot of time and patience, usually we need to cut every brick in a special way and then lay them making sure that the joints are all even; in order to achieve that we use a gauge rod. Sometimes we are lucky and the same gauge rod that we have used to build the entire house works for some windowsills; if it does not, then we have to work it out how to make this windowsill, we can make smaller joints or larger joints, as long as the outcome looks acceptable.

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The cavity brick house. 

The difference between the brick veneer and the cavity brick house is this: the brick veneer house all the walls are made of timber, and the timber frame is just like the complete timber house with the exception that the outside is veneered with bricks, so that the building looks as if it is made of bricks, but in reality, the timber walls are the load bearing walls and they can stand on their own, if you cover them with something else other than bricks. But the cavity bricks is different, all the outside walls in the cavity bricks are made of bricks or blocks, at least the external walls are made of two brick-walls one beside the other with a cavity between them, these two external walls are tied together with cavity ties, in a way it is very much like the brick veneer where the timber external walls are tied together with ties to the veneer brick wall.

For the bricklayers the cavity brick house is easier to build because he can set everything to suite his face brick walls, so, this is an advantage for him. But in this case if there is no builder of foreman around the bricklayer needs to work out where the opening of doors and windows are and put them in place; this needs to be done because the door frames and the window frames need to be tied permanently to the brickwork while the work is in progress. So, we must admit that this is not for the beginners, as it takes a good tradesman to do that.

There are a lot of other things that need to be done, some of them are just like what we have described for the brick veneer, but one thing in particular is different here; because the brick walls are load bearing walls and whatever goes above them need to be tied the wall, the bricklayers has to make sure that there are ties that are able to tie down the roof of the house permanently; this could be achieved by steel rods that start from the concrete floor or from the foundations. In some cases where there are not enough steel rods from the concrete below, the bricklayer can add some special made brackets several courses of bricks below the top, this is also good, but not as good as the steel rods that start from the foundations.

I believe that I have covered the most important things in building this imaginary house, so I hope that this article can help someone that is building his own house. Anyhow, there are not enough photos to explain what we are talking about, so, you have to click on this link to see them, Building a veneer housethis is all in this article. 

See you, in our next article, DIY Retaining walls

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