Bricks and Mortar

Meanwhile along with the fitting of the steel feet, Julian's usual brickies appeared, and the perimeter walls sprung up. The bricks we have used are Weinerberger Staffordshire blue bricks, which do have a sort of blueish tinge to them, but were picked as they were the easiest available option to get the look of a blackish wall. They're varying mottled shades, and with a dark grey mortar dye which they mixed on site, looked quite smart from the outside. The whole perimeter area was stained with mortar dye, but with the incessant rain it wasn't long before it was gradually washed away, goodness knows what it contained.

The outer wall of bricks was done first, followed by the inner skin built on top of the beam and block floor around the edge, which would hold in place the floor insulation. This created a deep cavity round the edge into which the cavity insulation would sit. This insulation was supposed to be installed at the same time, but the brickies didn't want to do so, citing various reasons as to why this couldn't be done given the design. They needed to get on and only had a few days for us too.

Whilst the outer work looked ok, the inner cavity was looking an issue, with the wide DPC poking up at odd angles but seemingly not long enough to create the shape we needed as per the design, a lot of cack inside the cavity, blobs of mortar (known as 'snots'!) drying out, and uncertainty over how this cavity would be sorted. We had to call upon our building inspector to come out, and she appeared one morning while we were both on site, stood in the pouring rain feeling hopeless. She came up with a workable solution to the design we had, which would mean no need to adjust the DPC. Phew. Huge relief.

Still meant that cavity needed filling somehow.....