The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Estimating Frame And Brick Houses

There is a porch entrance on the right side of the building where the steps leading in are inclosed with bricks. This inclosure, taking both sides, measures about 14 feet in area, which will require, to build, about 14 X 17 = 238 bricks. Brick work in and about verandas, porches and steps, not otherwise accounted for, makes about 40 feet area, which requires 17 X 40 = 680 bricks to complete.

Bricks In Chimney.

We still have the chimney to deal with. Already we have passed the walls through all the chimneys to a hight corresponding to the hight of the walls of the building. Starting with the large chimney on the right elevation, we find it has an area, measuring from the stone work to the plate, of 92 feet, and from the plate line to coping on top, 72 feet. This latter must be doubled, because the shaft, from the plate up, is double the thickness of the wall, and no deduction for wall has been made in the shafts above the plate, as has been the case with them below the plate. Doubling this 72, we get 144 feet, to whic is added the 92 feet for the lower portion of the chimney, making 236 feet, which is the total area we have to figure on. From this we get: 17 X 236 = 4012, the number of bricks required to complete that chimney. The kitchen chimney, being the same size, requires the same number of bricks—namely, 4012—to build it.

The chimney showing a fireplace in the sitting room may be measured as double all the way up, as it is very much enlarged at its base in order to get in a good sized grate and ventilating flue. Its total hight is 40 feet, its width averages 4 feet, which makes a face area of 160 feet. It is made three bricks in thickness, which will make it as thick as a double wall if we leave out the unoccupied spaces left for the flues. In estimating, chimneys of this kind are figured on as being solid. Now, 160 doubled will give 320 as the area to be multiplied; therefore we get l7 X 320 = 5444 as the number of bricks required to build this chimney. From these figures we are enabled to tell how many bricks we require to complete the chimneys as shown in the plan. To repeat, we have for:

First chimney 4,012
Second chimney 4,012
Sitting room chimney 5,444
Making a total for chimneys of 13,468