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Because a simple small house, would be more affordable than a large one, it will attract more buyers than a large and well decorated house. that is why there are builders that will build small house instead of larger one. These house are usually built on the outskirt of town, where the block of land is also cheaper. | Source
Building Australia affordable houses
Welcome to my article,
Dear readers, we have labeled this blog, D.I.Y.Building works, because in this blog we start telling you how things are built. Now, this is part one of our original article of, Australia affordable houses. As I have said, I was working building these affordable houses in Brisbane. In those times, new affordable houses were built on the fringe of the city in the new suburbs, which is the same as today, if you want a new affordable house, you must look for it, in the new suburbs.
As we know, houses are not all the same, because houses come in a variety of styles and sizes. Of course, we want to live in the best houses available, but most of us cannot afford expensive houses, therefore, we should be happy to live in any house that we can afford to buy or rent.
For this reason of affordability, to satisfy the house supply market, there are several types of house that are being built at any given time. In this article, we are going to talk about the type of houses that I ended up working on, in the early sixties. Because this blog is meant to tell you, where I learned building things, which I intend to write a D.I.Y Building works, starting from this article.; since here we are going to tell you, how we were building houses from scratch, an mixing our own concrete.
In the early
sixties, I ended up working on average houses that the working class could
afford to buy, or at least the aim of the builders that were building them, was
based in this affordability, since they had designed them with this purpose,
because in the end, even though they had been built cheap not all of us workers
would afford to buy these types of houses. But anyhow this was the purpose of
building these types of affordable houses in the early sixties.
I guess that today is the same, some builders, build these affordable houses at the outskirt of any town, since the blocks of land are cheaper to buy. Anyhow, you might think that today house are being built in a modern way, and therefore, what I am writing here are things of the past. but you see if you want to do things yourself, you must use the old way, so, let me describe how we were building these houses from scratch.
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Building houses from scratch
Anyhow, I am writing these articles about building houses from scratch, because I want to write something useful for my readers, and I believe that knowing how houses are built is useful to know, since knowing a few things about houses comes handy at times; you see, we live in houses, therefore, we want to know as much as we can about them. Because houses need to be maintained, if we want to enjoy them fully. So, I am going to describe how these houses were built, with as many details as I can, so that anyone interested can learn something useful from these articles.
Now has I have
explained previously, I was working in the building industry with this
Italian builder, which was good for me because my native language is Italian.
Now, with this builder not only we were re-stumping or building rooms under the
existing houses, which required a lot of work to be done by hand, but we were
building new houses from scratch. As I have said at the beginning of the
sixties most of the digging were done by hand, specially the type of work that
we were doing on these new houses, as machines were expensive to hire then, So,
they were used only, if there was a lot of digging to be done, and with the
machines of those days we could only dig straight forward things and not small
detailed digging, as they were required to build these houses, anyhow as I
said, I did a lot of this digging work myself, as I was employed as builder
labor, and this was one of the jobs that I had to do.
Therefore now, let
us imagine that I have finished digging the foundation and these stump holes
for this new house, and now, we need to lay concrete in the foundation, and to
concrete the stumps foundation and the stumps themselves. So, let us go over
what we had to do, because in those times these things were all done by hand
and started from scratch. To do that you must know how to make your own concrete.
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Making your own
concrete on site from scratch
Let me explain, what
is meant by concrete in buildings and how it is made You see, if during your
life, you are going to do renovations, it is useful to know how to make your
own concrete, so that you understand what is required and how and why it must
be done in certain ways, you will find this information written in this article.
Some people can say that today things are different, so why bother to tell us
this stuff about how to mix concrete properly, when we can buy concrete ready
mixed by truckload, or in bags and all you need to do is to add water to make
concrete. I say, okay, you can do that. But there are times and places, when
you must do these things the old way.
Therefore, I
believe that you still need to know how concrete is made from scratch, because
that is the only way if you don’t want to make mistakes. Therefore, let me tell
you how we were mixing our concrete in the sixties, and what is required to do
that and how it is supposed to be done, if you want a good job done and the
concrete to last a long time.
By the way, here we
need to clarify one thing, what is meant by the word concrete, because most
people replace it with the word cement. On building sites, the word concrete means
the element mixed together able to harden to a solid consistency within a
certain length of time, therefore, it has got to be done the right way.
One of the most
important things while mixing concrete is that the concrete must be well mixed
and to a workable consistency using the least amount of water possible, because
if too much water is used then the concrete becomes weaker, therefore, it must
be done properly.
Usually concreting
and other jobs are done according to its specifications, you see, any firm that
makes building plans, for a house or something of more importance, they must
write also the specification how the job needs to be done. In these
specifications it will be written what material to use, how to use it and the
quantity and quality required. Therefore, to concrete a foundation for an
average small house, the specification could state that the concrete must be
mixed to a consistency at least 1 to 6; this means that
to mix the concrete you should use 1 part of Portland cement 2 parts of river
sand and 4 parts of gravel (aggregate) and mix it as required until an even
consistency is achieved. For the stumps usually would be a bit more cement than
the foundations. But I must say that sometimes even these rules had to be
changed a bit depending on the material that can be delivered on that local
site.
Now let us say that
we are ready to start mixing the first batch of concrete, as we have made
everything ready, and everything has been delivered. To make concrete you need
at least four elements of materials plus clean water; 1 Portland cement, 2
washed river sand, 3 clean or washed gravel and 4 reinforcement steel rods, and
it is helpful if you have a mixer if you have to mix a large amount of
concrete, because to mix by hand is hard work and the concrete needs to be well
mixed.
Now let us start
the mixer and make the first batch, while the mixer is turning around, the very
first thing you put in the mixer is water, one must be careful not to put too
much water to start with, it has got to be just enough to mix everything to a
certain consistency, so let us say that we put 8 litres of water (the amount of
water can be different, since it depends on the amount of water that is already
in the (sand gravel) aggregate) then we put in the mixer cement, next is the
river sand twice as much as the cement and then the clean gravel 4 time as much
as the cement; here the mixer is going around and mixing everything together.
Please note, that
if you change the way you put your materials in the mixer, from what I have
described above, you may have different result, and usually it would take
longer to mix everything properly and to the right consistency.
For people that do
this job all the time it is easy for them to see if the concrete that is being
mixed has the right consistency required, once you know this, if it is too dry
just add a bit of water and if it is too wet you should add a bit of everything
else. There you are it is not too hard if you know how to do it.
What I have written
above applies only to house building of less importance, for building that are
large and important the concrete needs to be to a high standard and
specifications, so, here again you need to know what is needed before you do
anything. Anyhow, that is a job for the experts.
Anyhow, as you can see this is the first blog, where I am trying to tell you how to do things yourself. Now, I believe that this blog is long enough; so, I am going to write the second part of this article, in our next blog, called, concrete requires team work. See you soon.
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This blog is, old man-lifeworks
Building Australia affordable houses
IS TO BE CONTINUED WITH
Concrete requires team work.
See you soon.
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