Brickie

A good osteopath is worth their weight in gold. Mine’s £50 for half hour & it’s money well spent. Used to use a guy (now retired) who had been on Crystal Palace’s payroll in the 70’s. I went in one day after pulling up lifting the mixer on to the stand,in agony & very restricted movement,convinced I’d be lucky if I made it back to work in a week. He wired me up to some electrical contraption which sent signals to the area in spasm & I was back at work the next day. As a side effect,I’m sometimes good for WiFi .))

Are the neighbours houses pretty much the same as yours? By that I mean,do they seem like they were built as part of the same development?

As others have said-what is the reason for the cavity?

I would assume someone somewhere makes them imperial sized for remedial works on Victorian bridges etc but I’d bet they’re £££££. Have you had a sample batch of your handmade bricks delivered yet? If you use the standard metric blue engineering’s commonly available,I’d compare them in length to your face bricks. If the engineering’s are laid with 10mm Cross joints (so 215mm brick plus 10mm & so on) & your face bricks average at say 218mm then this could give you problems if any of the engineering’s are to be seen.

I have NEVERworked with a nationality of people who swear so frequently,and at times you would think unswearable,as the Portuguese. To the point where it’s just punctuating,or pausing a sentence. The Polish ‘Corva’ (100% spelt incorrectly,& probably a Russian word originally) is heard probably at least 10 times/hour but is,I believe,a catch all ‘damn/f**k/‘etc etc. More interesting to me is the Romanian “chi faj “ (again spelt incorrectly) which has multiple meanings;a greeting (“hows it going?-“probably the most literal translation) to an expletive (what the f**k?) and a few things in between,depending on the intonation.

Concrete or aerated?

A lot depends on a/the background & b/the type & condition of the render. Poorly applied s/c render on concrete blocks may come off a dream-well applied lime render on bricks might be an absolute PITA. Really not a job where a catch all m2 price can be applied,IMO.

I’ve got the Stabila 1200 masons level,but as you say it’s top money. All Id say is-whatever you buy don’t hit it with anything! 1200mm rather than 1800 might be better insofar as less of it to get bashed in the car,so reducing the potential for damage.

Did he have one super-long fingernail like the cocaine dealers in 70’s films? :))

I’m going to buck the trend here & say don’t bother with plastic bagged cement. In my experience,you have to cover it anyway as the chances of there not being a pin prick hole in the odd bag is zero,so any decent rainfall & you’ve got wasted (more expensive )bags. Spend a few quid on a couple of tarpaulins & get the bags dropped on pallets to keep them off the ground. Tarps will get used again & again as you go through your build,so a sound investment. Also,my experience of Rugby cement (albeit some years ago) was that it was horrible-tacky & very hard to do a clean job with. Might be worth doing a trial run in the footings just with one mix of your proposed superstructure mortar & get feedback from your brickie.

That’s what coring holes are for. Leave out every 4th brick on Dpc & loop some hessian from one coring hole to the next. Every morning,you simply turn the hessian loop,bringing any mortar droppings from inside the cavity to the outside. Anywhere you have a door opening can be cleaned with a batten,rodding any droppings to your coring holes but you need to take care not to get too vigorous & make a tear in the tray.

Few examples-

I have to say that,so long as the quality is decent,you will have had an absolute result on those prices. I see posts on social media for jobs in the North East,North West & even Scotland exceeding those rates,and that’s from a Subbie who’s taking a cut and would be with forklift/crane on site with silo mortar & horizontal loading only (I.e. no ladder work.)

@nod will put me right here if I’m wrong but I was told the golden rules of Plastering are 1/ control background suction & 2/ right amount of key between coats. Mess one or both of those up & you’ve got problems.

Have to say-I think Parlour’s book would shade it on tales of dressing room hi jinks :))

“Angle grinder?? Angle grinder?? The Egyptians didn’t need them to build the Pyramids did they!!” Cam be extremely frustrating trying to get brickies to use labour saving gadgets (a large percentage,possibly 50% still think profiles are a waste of time.) I had a Hod carrier refuse to use my brick lifters as “my job’s a Hod carrier,which means I carry the Hod. “

If it’s half as good as Ray Parlour’s autobiography then it’s a cracking read.

Heard talk from the older guys I used to work about the summer of ‘76 (my memories of it are only of being a 3 year old naturist in the garden,with embarrassing photo evidence still around.) Apparently they had to soak hessian as Jeremy says to cover the walls,or they would dry out too quickly & crack.

Yes,only any good for aerated blocks though.

A block saw is dead handy if you don’t have many to do,you get a lovely straight cut.

If you do decide to go with the thin joint system, I’d first urge you to a) do one of those 10 day courses at a private training provider & b) see if you can find a specific course for thin joint system. If, after doing both of these you feel confident that you can handle it then start considering it for your build. A 10 day course is no substitute for an apprenticeship but obviously that’s out of the question, but the more hands on tuition you receive the better. Youtube videos are a useful resource but nothing compares to learning in the flesh. As I said, I only did thin joint once, probably 15 years ago now but I’d been on the tools for 5 years by then & had my qualifications, & I still struggled.

If the desire to be watertight asap is driving this,then would it not be simpler to look at TF? With system you’re describing the materials costs are stacking up,never mind the labour. Would planning accept brick effect render system? Have seen some done in conjunction with EWI & the results were pretty good.

A/ it can do but it’s s bit fiddly to get it exactly bedded asyou would a 100mm strip of Dpc so for the sake of it I’d use 100mm too. We used to cut the membrane,slip the tray under & then staple the membrane back. PLEASE get some info from the TF company first before doing any of this though. B/ possibly,depends on how tough/frost rated your facing brick above is though. I’d make the muck a bit stronger,or use Sulphate resistant up to dpc. With your kickers coming loose,try dipping them in water before bedding them. This should kill the suction & stop them drying out too quick.

Only ever done it once & didn’t get much guidance at the time,so found it a PITA. I’ve seen brickies on Social media swear by it though. Things I would want to research would be expansion joints,advice on how many courses to go at a time,things like that. As was mentioned on another thread-are you really sure this is going to be a consideration? I.E. have you made a rudimentary programme of all the Site activities (not to mention the off site hoops that need jumping through) between now & you being at the stage where you need facing bricks on Site? Which is normally,foundation blockwork in,ground floor structural slab or b&b in,drainage in,,Site power on,welfare facilities sorted. I know the brick lead time seems daunting but it’s amazing how the weeks can fly by just getting yourself to that stage. A bit of bad weather,some unforeseen problem in the ground,a utilities contractor not being available when you want them or taking ages to do their bit-there are so many things that can slow progress down at the start its unreal.

On your approved plan does it show the heights as a height above Ordnance Datum? E.g. 77.6 AOD. If so,this would suggest a nearby datum exists. Regarding your trenchfill,the groundworkers I know use a laser level with the beeping audio on the receiver & an ‘elephants foot.’ This is basically just an upside down ‘T’ shape in 4x2 timber,around 1.8m in height. The receivers are designed to be fixed to surveyors staffs so can easily be fixed to the 50mm side of a 4x2. They set the level & receiver so the underside of the elephants foot is at the desired height for the concrete & check it as it’s poured. It’s not 100% accurate as the timber can sit down a bit in wet concrete but is near enough for footing concrete.