Working as a builders' labor, 2

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork and building posts, so that you can learn something about how to built something yourself, at least in theory. So, keep reading please. 

You are here, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk 

This man in the photo could represent me, at the time when I was working as a bricklayers' labor, or as a young bricklayer. Anyhow, it was hard work, but I was strong enough to do it. But let me tell my story about those times. 

To work laying bricks you need many tools, one of which is the builder wheelbarrow, you need a mixer and other tools, but here we cannot show you much, because we do not have the photos.  

 

Dear readers, this is part 2 of our original article, House building in Brisbane Anyhow, as we have said, there were many types of houses being built in the sixties, some of them had a brick base, sometimes it was just front wall, at other times, we built the entire house base in bricks. So, this was another job that we did with our small team of bricklayer and concrete workers.

In order to be efficient and competitive a small team that lays bricks needs to be made of two bricklayers and a labor, of course larger teams can work well with a different number of people, anyhow this is what was like then and our team had two bricklayer and a labor as myself.

Now that I have explained that, let us start working, so that I can describe how things work out, who does what, and how it should be done. It is the bricklayers’ foreman that decides from where to start. But if he is not there, then it is up to whoever is there to start getting ready where the bricklayers must start. This is not hard to know because to lay bricks you must start from the lowest part of the foundation, So, when I was working as a bricklayer labor, I would get ready the bricks and the combo-boards, at the lowest point of the foundation, so, when the bricklayers had to start, all I had to do, was to give them fresh mixed mortar on these combo-boards, and then continue to supply them with brick and mortar as required.

Here I should say, that it is hard work for the bricklayer-labor and for the bricklayers, because at the end of the day one has to handle so many bricks, since in a day a bricklayer on a normal wall is supposed to lay on average 400 to 500 face bricks, or up to a thousand common bricks, of course this is wishful thinking and most times we didn’t, but we had to try to get there; this is how the bricklayers’ team works. Now let me break it down and describe what the labor does, and then what the bricklayers must do; I know all this because later I became and worked as a bricklayer for decades myself, but now let us talk about what the bricklayers’ labor does.

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These are the other tools that are needed on a building site, pick and shovels or mattock, are needed to move the dirt around, to mix the mortar and other things.   

So  what you do when you are working as a brickies labor.

The brickies labor job is hard work, it is also a semiskilled work, since he has got to know how to make mortar and to supply mortar and bricks to the bricklayer at the right time in the right place. It is obvious that he must have at his disposition a mixer to mix mortar and wheelbarrows, other small devises to help him achieve that.

Here I need to point out that to start a new job it is very hard, as the ground on the site is not flat and there are hips of dirt around the foundations where the brick or block walls are going to be built, so, the labor needs first to flatten the ground a bit, so that the mortar boards and the bricks can be positioned at the right distance from the foundation, this is about 60 centimetre plus from the walls that are being built, so that the bricklayers have enough room to move and at the same time they can reach the bricks and the mortar-boards without walking; in order to achieve that there needs to be one mortar boards and then one stack of bricks, and again one mortar board and another stack of brick, and so on for the whole length of the wall being built. Now that we have explained that and made it ready, the bricklayers are going to start to lay bricks, let me prepare the mortar, which some people may call cement or combo.

Preparing or mixing the mortar

There are rules to follow how to mix good mortar, so, one must keep in mind first what sort of material is available and can be delivered on the local site, because quantity and quality may vary with the locality. Anyhow, let us assume that for this job a load of brickies loam has been delivered on the site; in this case this brickies loam has some lumps in it, so, it needs to be screened before or after mixing the mortar, as I have screened it, I am ready to mix it now.

So, I start the mixer and put in clean water, and a small measure of mortar mix (this is a chemical that helps the mortar to be more workable) then I put in say a shovel full of Portland cement and four shovels full of brickies loam, this is how we usually mix mortar to lay bricks, it is one part of cement to four parts of loam by volume, therefore, for bigger batches you can have say; three shovels full of cement and twelve shovelful of loam and so on. Of course, these quantities can vary, if for instance it is written in the specifications that the mortar must be made with different amount of materials.

Anyhow, let me go back to this batch of mortar that I have mixed to the right consistency; Now, I take the wheelbarrow near the mixer and tip the mortar in the wheelbarrow, and then take the wheelbarrow with the mortar near the mortar boards, here I wet the mortar-boards before I place the mortar on them and finally I am ready for the bricklayers to get started. From now on I must make sure that the bricklayers have always enough mortar and bricks, otherwise they will we shouting at me Bricks! Or combo! (Or mortar!)

Dear readers, if I have missed a few things you have to use your own common sense to get everything going the right way, you see, most things on the building site is plain common sense.

I believe that I have said enough in this article, although there is a lot more to be said, how the bricklayers are going to lay bricks for this brick base. But I am going to leave it for next article, which we are going to call, D.I.Y. brickwork, there I will try to explain it in as many details as I can, how to build a house brick base. In fact, we are going to write a group of articles about bricklaying and other building trades; I hope that I can line them up in such a way that they make sense, and it is easy to follow. Anyhow, see you soon in our next article, D.I.Y. brickwork. Where I will write how the bricklayer lay bricks, in so many details that you can learn how to do it yourself. 

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This blog is, old man-lifeworks

Working as a builders' labor   

IS TO BE CONTINUED WITH

D.I.Y. brickwork.  

See you soon.

---------------------------

I believe that on the internet, it is  helpful if we keep our personal links handy, so that we can visit our sites from anywhere we are. These links hereunder are some of my links, feel free to visit them. 

 http://manneedsgod.co.uk

http://frankmenchise.com

http://diybrickwork.com 

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/godintheuniverse/

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House building in Brisbane, part one.

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork and building posts, so that you can learn something about how to built something yourself, at least in theory. 

You are here, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk 

House like this in Brisbane were built in the seventies, I have worked to build many houses like this in the seventies, in those times a lot of houses were brick veneer and a few were cavity bricks, they were very popular then. 

Welcome to part one of my article, House building in Brisbane

Dear readers, we must say that we build houses to live in them, the houses we live in can be different, depending on the country or even the zone where we are living. Now let me explain, any building that are meant for people to live in are called houses, it is the universal name that most people accept, other buildings have different names.

Anyhow, we must build houses to live in them, so, in this article we are talking about that, because this is what I did when I came to Australia in the sixties. I know that today building houses can be different from then, but not very much. Anyhow, we are going to talk about house brick bases, and working as a brickies labor.

So, we are talking about building house the old way, but it does not matter if it is the old way. House building in Brisbane in the sixties, was and is different from the old continent of Europe, because over there most houses are made of masonry, timber over there is more expensive than in Australia, and because of the colder climate. You see, thick walls of masonry absorb the heat during summer and act as storage of this heat by releasing it slowly during the colder months.  Anyhow, houses over there are built mostly from masons’ bricklayers, and the carpenters play a smaller part than they do in Australia.

Therefore, when we the European migrants came to Australia in the sixties, we thought this is strange to live in timber houses, and we were surprised to see that the carpenter played the role of builders. But we accepted that and we did what we had to do in whatever employment we found, and those of us who ended up working in the building industry, we did what we were told to do. But as we know, everything changes with time. As we will see later, when building houses with timber will change even here. Now that we have made this comparison, let us go back to what I was doing myself in helping to build these houses; this help will become self-explained as we keep writing what we were doing.   Therefore, let us talk about how most houses were being built by teams of workers, because that is how we were building houses in South East Queensland in the sixties.

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This is a typical timber house built on a brick base and stumps, it still had all the same features of the old timber house on wooden stumps, but it had also some living space under the house.

House building in Brisbane in the sixties

In the sixties and seventies, most houses building were done from teams of subcontractors, who had their own team of building workers, even if they were only a small team of two or three people, like the team I was working with, which had two tradesman and one labor (myself).  Now let me go over briefly what sort of teams were there; first there were the concrete workers and the bricklayers. When building small houses that did not have a lot to do with these trades, concrete and brickwork could be done from the same team; then there was the carpenter team, then the roof, the electrician and the plumber and the plasters. The work of the builder, which most times was the leading carpenter, because he had the largest job; not only he was building the timber frame of the house, but organised all the teams in a way that was appropriate, so that they were not in each other way while they were working, and finally do all the finishing work required.

In those times to be a builder of these standalone houses on an approved block of land was easy, as long as you were a building tradesman and had building knowledge and had the money to build them, you had this opportunity to build one of these houses, of course there were local authority inspections to be had while we were building, but if you knew what you were doing it was easy to pass. So, there were many house builders around that would hire teams of building workers as we were.

I need to say that the building industry in Australia is one of the main driving forces of the economy, since it employs lots of people that are willing to do hard physical work to earn their living, you see you don’t need to be a learned person to work on the building, all you need is common knowledge of things and enough English to understand what is wanted from you, if you know what you are doing; or you work with people that speak your native language and they explain to you what you need to do, but you had to work hard to keep this job.

I believe that in the sixties and seventies there were good opportunities to work on building houses, because the price of the houses was more affordable than they are today. Just looking back at those prices, we can say that one of those cheaper houses would be worth about four time the average wage of a person working full time for a year, so, most people could afford them; therefore, those builders that were building them were able to sell their houses at a decent profit that would enable them to build other houses. 

Anyhow, things change, in the beginning houses in Brisbane were mostly made of timber, and they were set on timber stumps, then in the sixties because the timber stumps would rot or they would be attacked by white ants they gave way to concrete stumps, and some brick walls under the house. Then from just a brick wall in front of the house they changed to a full brick base and concrete stumps or steel posts, then came the era of the brick veneer and finally concrete and cavity bricks. Today, I must point out that building apartments is different from the sixties, they are mostly made of reinforced concrete. 

Now that we have said a few things about the history of house building in Brisbane, let us talk about my contribution in the building industry and what I did during the earlier part of working building houses. If I remember right in my last article, I was talking about how we were concreting the stumps for a new house, and we had laid the foundations for brickwork, therefore, let us talk about the brickwork that we had to do, to build a brick base under the house. 

I believe that this blog is long enough, so, we are splitting this article of, House building in Brisbane in two, so, see you in our next blog, working as a bricklayers' labor building a brick base. here we really start to explain how we work on building sites. So, the real D.I.Y. building work will start.  

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This blog is, old man-lifeworks

House building in Brisbane explained   

IS TO BE CONTINUED WITH

Working as a bricklayers' labor 

See you soon.

---------------------------

I believe that on the internet, it is  helpful if we keep our personal links handy, so that we can visit our sites from anywhere we are. These links hereunder are some of my links, feel free to visit them. 

 http://manneedsgod.co.uk

http://frankmenchise.com

http://diybrickwork.com 

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/godintheuniverse/

------------------------------------------ 

Concrete requires team work

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork and building posts, so that you can learn something about how to built something yourself, at least in theory. 

You are here,  http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk 

In this photo above, there is a team of building workers, I guess they are having a break from work, when this photo was taken, because on building sites people work hard doing whatever they need to do. Anyhow, this is a team of building workers.  

This is an electric mixer, you can mix with it mortar, plaster or concrete, as long as you know how to do that. Anyhow, these days most time the concrete is ordered by truckloads, unless you need small amount of concrete. So this type of mixer is used more to make bricklayers mortar.  

Australia affordable houses

Welcome to part 2 of my article, Australia affordable houses

Dear readers, this is part 2 of our article Australia affordable houses. In our previous blog we have explained what is meant by concrete on building sites, and what you need to make concrete, now we want to explain the best way to work with concrete. To concrete well and do a fair amount of work you need a team, even if it is a small team. Our team was usually three of us, I as builder labor, John as bricklayer and Con the contractor who was a bricklayer and concrete layer as well. We didn’t mind if we switched around a bit to do the job. So, I was usually on the mixer mixing the concrete, one was with a wheelbarrow taking the concrete from the mixer to the foundations that we were concreting, and one was fixing the concrete in place.

Fixing the concrete for the foundation was physically the lightest job, when we were mixing the concrete with this mixer on site, but it is the most responsible job, because while concreting the foundations, you must make sure that the steel rods reinforcement was in the right position, at the same time you had to pack the concrete down and then the concrete in the foundations has to be finished level, this was easy when the ground was level, but when the ground was not level, it was necessary that steps were made and they had to be made to gauge, which was equal to the thickness of one or two laid bricks or more, or the thickness of a laid block, if blocks were going to be used to build the walls on this foundation, whatever was going to be used to lay on the foundations, we had to try to make an adjustment while we were laying the foundations; therefore, this was the job for the experts, at that time it was not that hard, because mixing by hand even using a mixer was a slow job, so, the bloke that was fixing the concrete had enough time to do his job right.

What I have written above is how we used to lay small house foundations in the early sixties, which are the same as we lay foundations today, except that today we order concrete already mixed, but we have to be ready with everything and everything has got to be in the right place, because the concrete ready-mix truck will unload its concrete quickly, so, there is no time to do anything else except to fix the concrete at the right level as quickly as possible.

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This is a typical stepped concrete foundation, the steps in the foundation, need to be set-up equal to the thickness of one two or three bricks thick. 

Concreting stumps on site

Now let me go back again to the early sixties, when we were concreting these stumps on site, this procedure is not done much today, the reasons for this change it is because the buildings have changed, and today these stumps can be made in a concrete factory, if they are not too big, and when cured can be delivered to the building site, where the worker can erect them as required. Large stumps or columns are usually still made on site, but with a different procedure, using read mixed concrete in form-work  

To concrete these stumps on site we had steel forms of various length, and these forms were assembled together with steel pins, so, we would assemble these steel forms and then start to mix concrete, we had also to make sure that the stumps foundations were exactly in the right place by using the marked profiles and tight line between them.

In this case, it was an easy job for the fellow that is mixing concrete, but a lot harder for the blokes that had to pour the concrete in the stumps form-work and make sure that the stump was exactly in the right place and finished at the right height and were also plumb (perfect vertical position). It was also necessary that some reinforcing rods were placed in the right position with a purpose made devise. These are how we made those onsite stumps in the sixties.

These concrete stumps that we made in the sixties were better that the timber stumps that they were replacing, because it was an improvement as they did not rot with the passing of time and the white ants could not eat them. Here we can say that these concrete stumps on site were easy to make, if you knew the procedure, in fact it was easier to make a set of stumps than to fix concrete stumps made in the factory, as there is no heavy lifting involved.

But although these concrete stumps were easy to make, they are hard to move to a different position. So, to anyone that is going to attempt to dig out these stumps to move them to a new position, they better think twice because I tell you that the part that is under the ground is a lot larger than the stumps at the top. Remember what I said in our previous article, we had to dig a hole sixty-centimetre dip in the natural ground, and at the bottom should be a level base not less than forty centimetres x forty centimetres square.

I believe that we have said enough in this article, as we have explained the work that we did on these affordable houses and we will be coming back to talk about more building work in our next article, house building in Brisbane. See you soon.

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This blog is, old man-lifeworks

Building concrete requires team work   

IS TO BE CONTINUED WITH

House building in Brisbane  

See you soon.

---------------------------

I believe that on the internet, it is  helpful if we keep our personal links handy, so that we can visit our sites from anywhere we are. These links hereunder are some of my links, feel free to visit them. 

 http://manneedsgod.co.uk

http://frankmenchise.com

http://diybrickwork.com 

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/godintheuniverse/

------------------------------------------ 

Building Australia affordable houses

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork and building posts, so that you can learn something about how to built something yourself, at least in theory. 

You are here, http://oldman-lifeworks.blogspot.com, 

My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk 

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, Australia affordable houses 

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.   

--------------------------------------- 

This blog is, old man-lifeworks

Building Australia affordable houses   

IS TO BE CONTINUED WITH

Concrete requires team work.  

See you soon.

---------------------------

I believe that on the internet, it is  helpful if we keep our personal links handy, so that we can visit our sites from anywhere we are. These links hereunder are some of my links, feel free to visit them. 

 http://manneedsgod.co.uk

http://frankmenchise.com

http://diybrickwork.com 

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/prayersofreconciliation/

https://sites.google.com/site/godintheuniverse/

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