We finally start going upwards with our building, we have done virtually all of 9 corners out of the 14 we have in our house. The first course of block work is laid in these corners, using our L template and other tools to make a good neat job.
First-layer-on-9-Corners-1
We have put down 44 blocks in today’s work, 23 for the morning session and 21 in the afternoon session, each taking one load of mixing using half a bag of cement and 3 builder’s buckets of soft sand, which is about a 4 to 1 ratio (40 litres of sand against 10 litres of cement powder).
First-layer-on-9-Corners-2
Tomorrow, we will put down the 1 odd block to finish off the front Great room corner and then do the front extension porch and the front Utility room corner and then we will be back to the beginning again. We will check the alignment by stretching out some string and see how each corner matches up. Then we will start on the second course of concrete blocks on all the corners, but this time, put down 4 blocks on top of the 5 blocks we have done today. Because of the overlapping nature of the 140 mm wide blocks, we will have to slice off 75 mm off one block to make it go around the corner, overlapping the joints and hollows properly.