Brick Masonry Construction Tips for Quality and Durability

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Special care is required during the construction with brick masonry. These tips for brick masonry with quality construction is discussed in this article.

Brick Masonry Construction Tips

Following are the tips for construction of brick masonry buildings or structures: 1. Good brick masonry should utilize bricks which are sound, hard, well burnt and tough with uniform colour shape and size. 2. The bricks should be compact, homogeneous, free from holes, cracks, flaws, air-bubbles and stone lumps. These bricks should be properly soaked in water for at least two hours before use. 3. In the brick work, the bricks should be laid on their beds with the frogs pointing upwards. 4. The brick courses should be laid truly horizontal and should have truly horizontal and should have truly vertical joints. 5. As far as possible the use of brick-bats should be discouraged. 6. As far a possible the brick walls should be raised uniformly with proper bond. Generally the height of brick masonry construction in a day should be less than 1.5m. The maximum difference in rise of the wall between the different portions should not be more than one meter. 7. When the mortar is green, the face joints should be raked to a depth of 12 to 19mm in order to have a proper key for plastering or pointing. The mortar joints should be stuck flush and finished if no plastering or pointing is to be done. 8. In order to ensure continuous bond between the old and the new, the walls should be stopped with a toothed end. 9. Finished brickwork in lime mortar should be cured for a period of 2 to 3 weeks. This period can be reduced to 1 to 2 weeks in case of brickwork with cement mortar. 10. In order to carry out the brickwork at higher level, a single scaffolding is used.