Welcome to our
article,
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,
See you, in our next article, DIY Retaining walls.
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