Above: brickwork on Handford Road Centre, nomination for the Ipswich Society Awards 2022.

Whilst watching the slide presentation of the nominations for the Ipswich Society Awards, an interesting quality control issue came to the fore.  It demonstrated how easily things can go wrong on a building site, albeit in this case it was probably nobody’s fault.  But first, a bit of background.

These days, on any building project larger than a single house, the main contractor will sub-contract the brickwork to a team of self employed bricklayers, usually a gang of two with a third person as labourer, mixing the mortar and carrying bricks.

In the case of one of the winning nominations, Grimwade Street flats, a single gang was used throughout the construction of the main shell, the same labourer mixed the mortar and the colour remained consistent.   This is critically important when using multicolour bricks, the colour and consistency of the mortar affects the perceived colour of the bricks.

If different bricklayers and labourers are used on different days, at different heights on the same wall there is the probability that a slightly different colour of mortar will result, and the brickwork will appear banded (see photograph).  Additionally multicolour bricks should be mixed from different pallet loads as they are transferred from ground to scaffold. Any slight variation in colour will be lost in the finished mix. Failure to randomly mix such bricks will result in darker areas and areas of contrasting brickwork, which can then become stark with a contrasting colour of mortar.

What is really unfortunate about this problem is that the resulting blemish will remain for some considerable time.  My congratulations to all the builders who contributed to the Society Award-winning projects.    

John Norman

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