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

First Aid For The Ailing Houses

With a mortar joint of the usual thickness of 3/8 inch, mortar for laying 1,000 brick will require 6 sacks of cement—6 cubic feet—and 18 cubic feet of sand. From 50 to 60 pounds of hydrated lime can be added.

BRICKLAYING TOOLS

Bricklaying tools are quite simple and do not require an extensive outlay or extreme skill in use. There are three different types of trowels, all shaped somewhat the same, but varying in size: brick, buttering, and pointing. The brick trowel is used for general laying work. The buttering trowel is small and generally used in cramped quarters or where small areas must be filled with mortar—"buttered." The pointing trowel is the smallest of all and is used for shaping the joints between the brick and for cleaning excess mortar from these spots.

A brick hammer and a blocking chisel are handy tools, but their functions may be duplicated with a claw hammer and a cold chisel with an edge of 75 degrees. The brick hammer and the chisel are used to break and split bricks that must be used to fit in spots smaller than a standard brick size. They are used to remove broken or damaged brick from older work and to clean the opening of mortar so a new brick may be buttered in.

Levels of the carpenter type, measuring tapes, and straightedges are useful to the bricklayer. A special bricklayer's zigzag rule is available with numbers that read vertically, but the horizontal-reading carpenter's zigzag rule will do just as well for the part-time mason. An essential for good, accurate bricklaying is the line. This may simply be a heavy piece of cord, with two long metal spikes at each end to stick into the work and provide a guide for straightness. Without such a "navigational" guide, brickwork may almost be guaranteed to wander off course.

ESTIMATING BRICKWORK

To calculate approximately the number of brick required for a job—a wall, for example—the surface area should be figured in square feet. Twenty-two brick per square foot will be needed for a wall 12 inches thick; the area of the wall in square feet multiplied by 21 will thus give the number of brick required. Other thicknesses of wall will be in proportion.

Suppose that a 12-inch-thick wall, 6 feet high and 20 feet long, is to be built. The surface area will be 120 square feet; multiplying this by 21 will give 2,520 as the number of brick required. For these, 21/2 times the amount of mortar will be needed as for 1,000 brick. For a wall 8 inches thick, the figures would be reduced one-third; that is, 1,680 brick would be required and a little more than 11/2 times the amount of mortar required for 1,000 brick.