Day 8 (10) - The 'Brickies' have arrived

Although a short day relatively speaking, today was an important day. For today the bricks and bricklayers arrived on site.
Sean and Aidy arrived just after 7.15am and after the obligatory supply of teas (milk & 3 sugars for Sean and milk & 1 sugar for Aidy) they had a quick look over of the site and the architect's drawings.
They then set up the surveying equipment to make sure they laid the bricks straight and in the right place in relation to the existing building.



Laser Level (Aidy in the background)



The blocks, bricks, cement and sand for this stage had already been delivered the previous day so all that was left to do was unload the cement mixer and start laying the bricks

 

Engineering bricks

As you can see in the image below, the concrete blocks are laid on top of the concrete foundations topped off with a course and a half of the engineering bricks to bring it to the damp proof course (DPC) level. The gap in between is for insulation. the same was laid at the front of the house in preparation for building the porch.

Bricks laid to DPC level

Detail showing gap through which soil pipe will pass through

 As all the heavy excavation work, the mini-excavator and dumper were taken away leaving a bit more space on our drive for the arrival of the bricks...once we can decide on which type to go for.

Ready and waiting for some hardcore action

The challenge we have with the brickwork is that we have to match the existing bricks as best we can; this is a condition of being granted planning. However, the house was built in 1954 and as you can appreciate, measurements were still carried out in imperial units e.g. inches, feet, yards as opposed to metric mm, cm, metre etc. 
So not only is it difficult to get your hands on inexpensive imperial sized bricks these days, but the few places you can get them only offer 2 or three types of brick, none of which are a carbon copy of the existing bricks.
The new bricks will also contrast for the first few years with the weathered, slightly darker bricks on display. Whichever ones we choose, it'll be noticeable.

More news on this tomorrow when we get the samples.