NVQ Diploma L2 6705-23

Unit 206 Construct cavity walling forming masonry structures

Aim

The aim of this unit is to provide the learner with the
knowledge and skills to construct walling to form masonry structures

Learning outcome

The learner will:

1. understand how to plan and select resources for practical tasks

Assessment criteria

The learner can:

1.7 Name calculations and formulae for identifying quantities of Materials, Components and Fixings

How many Bricks or Blocks do I need?

Brick and blocks are laid to different thicknesses this will depend on the type of wall you are building.

The correct term is half or one brick wall see examples below

The half brick wall has 60 bricks per 1m²
One brick wall has 120 bricks per 1m², normally a garden walls.
½ brick wall is referred to as an outer or inner leaf when constructing a cavity wall.

A cavity wall can be built out of concrete blocks completely, or the inner leaf with concrete blocks and the outer leaf in bricks.

There are 10 concrete blocks per 1m² for a single skin wall, for cavity wall which is built out of concrete blocks completely this will be 20 blocks per 1m²

Like most trades in the construction industry especially in brickwork, a bricklayer needs to be able to work out areas and percentages of waste plus add and subtract numbers to a high standard.

Bricklayers need to be able to do calculations so they do not over order materials or have too many bricks stacked out on-site for a given lift on the scaffolding.

You need to break down the area into regular shapes like Squares, Rectangles and Triangles to make your calculation a lot easier and don’t forget to allow for waste especially on the gable end which has a lot of cuts.

Below there is an example of the number of concrete blocks for an outer leaf (10 blocks per 1 m²), you will notice that you need to be able to work out the areas of windows and doors to subtract it from the total bricks.