Bricklaying for the Do-It-Yourselfer

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One of the most unfortunate assumptions a novice homesteader makes is that bricklaying is a snap. I know of many an inexperienced bricklayer who has envisioned a beautiful, uniform, and eternal face of brick, only to finish with a faulty shifting wall that soon becomes a pile of rubble. While easily learned with a modicum of study and forethought, laying brick is both an art and a responsibility.

It's best at first to not get overly technical about the many selections of brick and their individual classifications, so let's deal with a term you probably have heard of before: face brick. There are three basic parts to recognize. They are called the face or front, the top or bottom, and the ends (figure 1). Depending on how the brick is going to be used, each of the three parts of the brick can be laid in two positions. The illustrations below show the six basic bricklaying positions.

The pattern that brick is laid in is actually called the "Bond." We are going to lay our brick in a pattern called
running bond (also referred to as half bond). Figure 8 shows a wall laid up in running bond.

Each row of brick is called a "course" and walls are usually the result of a duplication of two courses, the first (or layout) course and the alternate course. The alternate courses will have half bricks on the ends.

The folks at the masonry supply yard can advise you on the type of brick to be used on your project. Standard brick will cost approximately 30¢ to 45¢ each, depending upon what you select and where you live.

These prices probably shock you, as they still do me. Keeping a tight control on the amount of brick necessary for a specific project is your only hedge against waste, and, thankfully, the math involved is very simple.

There are seven standard-sized brick in one square foot. Multiply the length of your project by the height to get the number of square feet, then multiply this by seven. For example: If your project is going to be 15' long and 8' high you will need 840 bricks.

15' long x 8' high =120 square feet
120 square feet x 7 = 840 bricks

Now that you know how to select the number of brick that you need, we have to look at the other key material you need to lay the brick: the mortar. Mortar is made from masonry cement (a combination of Portland cement and hydrated mason's lime), fine mason sand (also known as fine aggregate), and clean water. The ratio is three parts sand to one part masonry cement and enough water to make a consistency very much like that of soft custard. When large quantities of brick are going to be used, the mason orders masonry cement in 70-pound bags, and sand by the ton or cubic yard.

Purchased this way, the masonry cement costs about $6.70 a bag and the sand costs approximately $26 per cubic yard or about $18 per ton. Depending on where you live, these prices can fluctuate. For smaller projects (300 bricks or less), I would suggest buying premixed mortar, which has the cementious materials and sand already mixed together in one bag. All you have to do is add water.

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