BRICKLAYING

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 September 1924, Page 3

BRICKLAYING

NEW BRITISH INVENTION.

Unskilled workers recently built a cottage at Tonbridge, England at the rate of 3000 bricks per ordinary working day. Their work was the product of a new system of rapid bricklaying, devised by Mr Brownlow, of the of Messrs, Slack and Brownlow, builders, of Tonbridge. ’ The system of construction is standardised. When the site of a house has been arranged, (uprights, preferab y of angle iron, are fixed on the ground level at the four corner, and upright tee pieces are fixed between these at intervals of ten feet or shorter distances where required. These uprights are fixed quite plumb, and form the building line of the house. Boards, usually 10ft long by 7in. deep and lin. thick, slide inside these angle and tee uprights and form the race against which the bricks are laid. Bricks placed against the inside of these boards will be perfectly plumb, being laid against the straight building line. The joints of each row of bricks are crossed, and as soon as three rows are laid another board is slipped into position and another three rows of bricks laid against it, and this procedure is adopted up to the full height of the building. Another method is to work with" one board only, raising every three courses, and resting it upon two nails pushed into the joints. Internal walls and partitions and the chimneys are also built in exactly the same way. Concrete slabs or bricks, it is claimed, can be laid in an equally rapid and efficient way by this process. One house per week, it is stated, could easily be put up from foundations to roof by eight men, with one skilled supervisor, in this way.