Brickwork

The brickwork element of your project will be carried out by a bricklayer, either employed by your builder or directly by yourself.

Before your bricklayer starts work it is important to ensure that he has all the materials he needs, the bricks are chosen and approved by the planners as a suitable match and the bond of brickwork is decided. In most situations the brick bond that you use will be decided by what you already have.

    Stretcher Bond Brickwork                          Flemish Bond Brickwork

       

• DPC to Joist - this ‘lift’ should be broken down by your bricklayers to help with agreeing stage payments, whilst there is a lot of work in this part, make sure the price breakdown looks fair, and they do not ‘draw’ too much of their money up –front, and leave sufficient money for joists to plate, and gables
  
• Joist to plate - this involves building the brick and blockwork from the 1st floor joist level to the wall plate (the wall plate is the piece of timer laid on top of the block work to support the roof trusses/timbers)
  
• Gables or topping out when the roof is on and the bricklayer can come back and finish off his brick and blockwork to the superstructure
  

To complete the brickwork it is more than likely that you will require scaffolding.

Below is a section through a typical single storey, flat roof extension: