Tony L

Missing mortar again. Is this OK? I don't think so, but I'm not a builder. 9

Internal corner - ie I was standing on the B&B to the the picture. It looks untidy to me, but I don't know what level of untidiness is acceptable on the inside. 8

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I used an absolutely straight piece of wood for this picture. I cleaned excess mortar off the tops & put the wood down. It's resting on the bricks in the red ellipse. See the gap in the blue ellipse. Is it OK to have so much mortar missing above the blue arrow? What about the smaller gaps in the mortar by the red arrows? 5

Here, I used the back of my tape measure as a straight edge. It's resting on the top of the brick between the vertical red lines. The bricks to the left are too low. 4

In this picture, the line is touching the top of the brick to the left of the air brick. 4 bricks along, at the end, the corner is 13mm too low. Look how wonky the brick above the arrow is. 3

There are loads more examples of this kind of step in the level of bricks/height of mortar bed. NHBC has a formula for determining whether the thickness of any bed joint is acceptable. I didn't come across this until this evening, so perhaps I'll have to go back & measure 8 successive bed joints & do the maths, although I don't know where to measure them, because my bed joints can have several mm difference from one end to the other of just one brick. NHBC is saying +/- 1.5mm from the average across 8 succussive, so it looks like the difference in height from one brick to the next above will be way out of spec'. 2

My builder says he’s finished this stage of the build & I should pay him. The last jobs on his list were to build the outer leaf up to DPC then put the crushed concrete base down for the scaffolding to go on. The build up to DPC is 4 courses of black bricks, as pictured. I’m not happy. I wasn’t pleased with what’s beneath this either, but at least it’s underground & can’t be seen. Should I knock all these black bricks down & pay somebody to do it properly? Obviously, I’d be deducting the cost of work (by a competent person this time) & materials, from the approx. £18k the builder wants me to pay. Picture 1

My builder tells me he's finished (up to DPC). All my ABs look like this. Is this OK? I envisaged the flange on the periscope would fit around the brick & there'd be mortar in the perps to hold everything in place. The periscope can't be pushed any further towards the air brick because there's mortar in the way.

Thanks, @Canski. That's good to know.

@twice round the block Thanks for thinking of this. They're FL, so yes. Here's the spec'. Crest Nero Black.

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Me again – sorry. Here’s another mess, for you to think about, please. My builder explained, a week ago, the reasons why this corbel, was absolutely fine. Since then, I have uncovered defects in his work so now I’m doubting his explanation. Before I tell him, to pull it all apart & do it in the way we agreed it would be done, I’d be grateful for any comments/advice, please. The front of the house is the wall on the left side of picture 4. My idea was to have a small pier (120mm) off the front corner of the house, to hide the rain water downpipe, which is on the side of the house, when the house is viewed from the road. Drawing 1 shows an extra bit of poured foundation, circled in red, to support this pier. The extra brick was drawn narrow side on, instead of wide side on; this was corrected on the drawing the builder has, & I discussed this detail with the builder. When I first saw what he’d built off the foundation, it was just a little stub of concrete coming up – a little smaller than half a brick, where the red circle is on the picture 4. Also, he’d put 2 downpipes in to the drain, one of which was right up against the half brick sized pier. See pictures 2 & 3. I told the builder, the downpipe nearest the pier wasn’t required so he should take it out & build the pier up off the concrete, the size of a full brick, as agreed. He didn’t do this. He took the top off the redundant downpipe, which is still connected into the IC (you can see inside the blue circle in picture 4), put a lintel over it & said everything would be fine because the pier would be corbelled. This corbelled pier will stop short of the roof, because the roof will slope down to the front of the house & a hidden gutter will feed water across the front of the house, through 90 degrees over the pier then into the downpipe. The active downpipe, in pictures 2 & 3, had to be re-done because the rainwater is going into the drain & no trap had been fitted. Is the corbelling OK, or do I tell the builder to pull it all apart, take the redundant downpipe off, & build up properly off the foundation, as he first agreed to do? Everything you see here (with the possible exception of the top course of bricks) will be under ground. There will be a path up against the walls of the house. How is the trap supposed to be supported, underneath & to the sides? It was just hanging in space when the picture was taken. If we have a storm like they had in Valencia recently, I should think nothing short of a deep concrete bed under the trap will suffice. I was expecting a bottle gulley, which would have been easier to support, but I suppose this type is better, because it will allow more flow.

@Canski, that's very reassuring, thank you. I'm printing your last post out to make sure it doesn't get forgotten. Am I right in thinking these cavity trays wouldn't have been required if there had been a cavity (instead of 350mm wide trench blocks) going down below the beams? If so, I want to think about the additional cost for these cavity trays. The builder was supposed to be following drawings that show the beams on 100mm wide blocks, with a cavity below.

Ah right. Sorry - I'm just looking forward so much to never seeing this builder again, that's why I misinterpreted your comment.

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2 - sorry, the forum software has rotated my portrait picture

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Thanks to @Canski for studying a picture in one of my other threads & bringing my attention to this possible defect. It doesn't look as bad as we feared from the picture on the other thread, but it would be good to receive some comments & advice, please. The builder has started building up the outer leaf of the cavity wall. This comprises 2 courses of staff blues onto trench blocks, then I've got 2 courses of expensive black bricks (most of which shouldn't even be there, because he was supposed to save those for above ground level - but let's ignore that issue for now). The outer leaf looks straight, although this far from high quality brick work. I've taken some pictures showing the variance in the gap from the inside of the inner leaf to the edge of the B&B floor, down one side of the house. There's a 6"/150mm ruler in each picture. The ruler measures 159mm, including the clear plastic ends that are of the ends of the measuring part. Picture 1 shows a gap of at least 170mm across the cavity. The ruler's left edge is resting on a protruding beam. I don't know why the beam wasn't pushed over, so the extra length hung off the sleeper wall in the middle of the floor, so it wouldn't be seen. Will the protruding beam be in the way of my trays? I haven't had time to learn about trays yet. It looks like the run of blocks into the top corner came up 20mm or so short, & rather than cut 2 blocks to put the corner where it should be, the builder has just left a gap. Should I insist he re-works this so I have 150mm at the corner? What's the acceptable tolerance here? I probably wouldn't even be asking if he'd managed +/-8mm. Picture 2 is a different view, with the ruler in the same position as picture 1 Picture 3 shows the ruler in between the 2 ICs you can see in picture 2. The cavity here is 160mm. Picture 4 shows the ruler just a little further along, by the brick slip you can see in picture 2. This is close to 150mm. If the cavity had been built like this all the way along, I'd have been happier. Do I just build on top of what I've got here, & make sure the cavity where the back door goes has parallel sides? If we put a 100mm wide block on the edge of the B&B at the end where the gap is 170mm or more, that would mean the 20mm nearest the centre of the house is not fully supported underneath.