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Welcome to our blog, affordable rentals
and this post, just building houses
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Just building houses
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Just building houses
Dear readers, in this post because we don’t have many
properties for rent, we would like to write something about building, just to
keep our readers going and our blog active, so, we would like to talk about
building houses, and at the same time I will be telling you my own life story
and how I ended up working in the building industry, so I am going to say a few
things about new housing, however if you came across this post because you were
looking for a modern house, or other ideas about building them, I am going to
post here a few links, so that you could find our article useful in this regard
also.
Here are the links as I have said; I hope you find
what you are looking for.
House building in the sixties
House building in Brisbane in the sixties
As I said at the
beginning, we are writing in a few articles how we built house in the past,
because that is what I did. In the sixties and seventies most houses building
were done from teams of subcontractors, who had their own team of building
workers, even if they were only a small team of two or three people, like the
team I was working with, which had two tradesmen and one labour as myself, as
we have already explained in the previous hub. Now let me go over very briefly
what sort of teams were there; first of all, there would be the concreters and
bricklayers, which usually could be the same team, as we were mostly building
small houses that did not have a lot to do with these trades, as the main work
would be for the carpenters, therefore there would be carpenter team, then the
roof, the electrician and the plumber and the plasters. The work of the
builder, which most times was the leading carpenter; because he had the largest
job, so, he not only would build the timber frame of the house, but also would
organise all the teams in a way that would be appropriate, so that they were
not in each other way while they were working and finally do all the finishing
work required.
In those times to
be a builder of these standalone houses on an approved block of land was easy,
as long as you were a building tradesman and had some knowledge of building and
you had the money to build them, or you had a lender that would give you money
to build, you had this opportunity to build one of these houses, of course
there were local authority inspections to be had while we were building and at
the end of it, but if you knew what you were doing it was easy to pass. So
there were so many house builders around that would hire these teams of
building workers as we were.
I need to say that
there are good reasons to believe that the building industry in Australia is
one of the main driving forces of the economy, since it employs lots of new
comers that are willing to do some hard physical work to earn their living, you
see you don’t need to be a very learned person to work on the building, all you
need is some common knowledge of things and enough English to understand what
is wanted from you if you know what you are doing, or you work with some people
that speak your native language and they explain to you what you need to do.
I believe that in
the sixties and seventies there were very good opportunities to work on
building houses in the building industry, because the price of the houses was
more affordable than they are today. Just looking back at those prices we could
say that one of those cheaper houses would be worth about four time the average
wage of a person working full time for a year, so people would be able to
afford them, and therefore those builders that were building them were able to
sell their houses soon enough at a decent profit that would enable them to
build other house.
As we all know
everything changes with the passing of time and there are usually good reasons
for them to change, as we usually become aware when we look back at the changes
that have taken place. So let us look at what has taken place in the houses and
other building accommodations in the building industry.
You see, as we have
said, in the beginning houses in Brisbane were mostly made of timber and they
were set on timber stumps, then in the sixties because the timber stumps would
rot or they would be attacked by white ants they gave way to concrete stumps, and
also some brick walls under the house. Then from just a brick wall in front of
the house they changed to a full brick base and some concrete stumps or steel
posts, then came the era of the brick veneer and finally concrete and cavity
bricks, today, as I am editing this article I have to point out that building
apartments is very different than in the sixties, as they are mostly made of
reinforced concrete.
Now that we have
said a few things about the history of house building in Brisbane, let us talk
about my contribution in the building industry and what I did during the
earlier part of my working building houses. If I remember right in my last
article I was talking about how we were concreting the stumps for a new house,
and we also had laid the foundations for some brickwork, there is a lot mere
that could be said, but this post is becoming too long, so, we will be talking
about the brickwork under the house, in our next post. See you soon.
------------------------------------- Affordable Rentals
Just building houses
IS TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, brickwork under the house
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Yola.com
