Welcome to my article 32,
Australia affordable houses
Australia affordable houses
Australia affordable houses
In Australia as well as in other part of the world not all the houses are the same, because houses come in a variety of styles and sizes, of course we all would like to live in the best houses available, but most of us would not be able to afford large expansive houses, therefore, we have to be happy to live in any house that we can afford to buy or rent.
For this simple
reason of affordability, in order to satisfy the house market so to speak,
there are several types of house that are being built at any given time. Here I
am not going to mention the many type of house that could be built, because we
are only saying this to point out to you what we are going to say next about
building houses, in order to point out the sorts of houses that I ended up
working on to fix or build in the early sixties.
In the early
sixties I ended up working on average houses that the working class could
afford to buy, or at least the aim of the builders that were building them was
based in this affordability, since they had designed them with this purpose in
mind, because in the end even though they had been built cheap not all of us
would be able to afford to buy these type of houses. But anyhow this was the
purpose of building these types of houses in the early sixties.
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Building houses from scratch
My story of
building affordable houses from scratch
Let me say this,
one of the reasons why I have started writing all these articles about building
houses is because, I would like to tell you the story of my life and what I did
when I came to Australia; but at the same time I would like to say something
useful to my readers, and I believe that knowing how the houses are built might
be useful for my readers, since knowing a few things about building houses
comes handy at times; you see, we all live in houses and therefore we would
like to know as much as we can about them.
Now what I might be
telling you here is the story of my life and how I worked in the building
industry, but while I am doing that I am going to make an effort to describe
how these building things were and are done with as many details as I can, so
that anyone interested in houses might be able to learn something useful from
these building articles.
Now has I have
explained already in our last hub, I was working in the building industry with
this Italian builder, with this builder not only we were re-stumping or building
rooms under the existing houses, but we would also build new houses from
scratch. As I have already said at the beginning of the sixties most of the
digging were still done by hand, specially the type of work that we were doing
on these new houses, as machines then were used mostly if there was a lot of
digging to be done and with the machines of those days one can only dig
straight forward things and not small detailed digging as they were required to
do for these type of houses, anyhow as I said, I did a lot of this digging work
as I was employed as builder labour.
Therefore now, let
us imagine that I have finished digging these stump holes and some foundation
for this new house, as I have explained in our previous hub, and now, we need
to concrete the foundation and also to concrete stumps. So let us go over what
we had to do, because in those times these things were started from scratch.
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Making your own concrete
Making your own
concrete on site from scratch
Let me explain, what
is meant by concrete in buildings and how it is made would be good to know; if
during your life you are going to do any sort of renovations, it would be
useful to know how to make your own concrete properly, so that you might
understand what is required and how and why it must be done in certain ways,
you will find it written in this hub. Some people might say here that today
thing are usually done in a different way, so why bother to tell us all this
stuff about how to mix concrete properly, when we can buy the concrete ready
mixed by truckload, or in bags and all you have to do is to add water to make
concrete.
But I believe that you still need to know how
concrete is made from scratch, because that is the only way if you don’t want
to make costly mistakes. Therefore, let me tell you how we were mixing our own
concrete in the sixties and also what is usually required to do that and how it
is supposed to be done, if you want a good job done and the concrete to last a
long time.
By the way here we
need to clarify one thing as I am worried that some people might not be sure
what is meant by the word concrete, because usually they would replace it with
the word cement; on building the word concrete means all the element mixed
together able to harden to a solid consistency within a certain length of time,
therefore it has got to be done the right way.
One of the most
important things while mixing concrete is that the concrete should be well
mixed and to a workable consistency using the least amount of water possible,
because if too much water is used then the concrete becomes weaker, therefore
it must be done properly.
Usually concreting
and other jobs are done according to its specifications, you see any good firm
that makes building plans, which may be just a small house or something else of
more importance, and they have to writes also the specification how the job
needs to be done. In these specifications it will be written what material to
use how to use it and also the quantity and quality required. Therefore to
concrete say a foundation for an average small house, the specification written
in those times could usually say that the concrete should be mixed to a
consistency at least 1 to 6; for people that knew this it meant that to mix the
concrete you should use 1 part of Portland cement 2 parts of river sand and 4
parts of gravel (aggregate) and mix it as required until an even consistency is
achieved. For the stumps usually would be a bit more cement than the
foundations. But I have to say that sometimes even these rules had to be
changed a bit depending on the material that could be delivered on that local
site.
Now let us say that
we are ready to start mixing the first batch of concrete, as we have made
everything ready, and everything has been delivered. To make concrete you need
at least four elements of materials plus clean water; 1 Portland cement, 2
washed river sand, 3 clean or washed gravel and 4 reinforcement steel rods, and
also it is helpful if you have a mixer if you have to mix a large amount of
concrete, because to mix by hand is hard work and the concrete needs to be well
mixed.
Now let us start
the mixer and make the first batch, while the mixer is turning around, the very
first thing you put in the mixer is water, one must be careful not to put too
much water to start with, it has got to be just enough to mix everything to a certain
consistency, so let us say that we put 8 litres of water (the amount of water
can be different, since it depends on the amount of water that is already in
the (sand gravel) aggregate) then we put in the mixer cement, next is the river
sand twice as much as the cement and then the clean gravel 4 time as much as
the cement; here the mixer is going around and mixing everything together.
For people that do
this job all the time it is easy for them to see if the concrete that is being
mixed has the right consistency required; if it is too dry just add a bit of
water and if it is too wet you have to add a bit of everything else. There you
are it is not too hard if you know how to do it.
What I have written
above here applies only to house building of less importance, for building that
are large and important the concrete needs to be to a very high standard and
specifications.
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Concrete requires team work
To concrete usually
requires team work
In order to
concrete well and do a fair amount of work on these houses you need a team. Our
team was usually three of us, I as builder labour, John as bricklayer and Con
the contractor who was a bricklayer and concreter. So I was usually on the
mixer mixing the concrete, one was with a wheelbarrow taking the concrete from
the mixer to the foundations that we were concreting and one was fixing the
concrete in place.
Fixing the concrete
for the foundation was physically the lightest job, when we were mixing the
concrete with this mixer on site, but it also was/is the most responsible job,
because while concreting the foundations first of all you have to make sure
that the steel rods reinforcement was in the right position, at the same time
you had to pack the concrete down and then the concrete in the foundations has
to be finished level, this was easy when the ground was level, but when the
ground was not level, it was necessary that some steps were made and they had
to be to gauge, which was equal to the thickness of one or two laid bricks or
more, or perhaps the thickness of a laid block, if blocks were going to be used
to build the walls on this foundation, whatever was going to be used to lay on
the foundations, we had to try to make an adjustment while we were laying the
foundations; therefore this was the job for the experts, at that time it was
not that hard, because mixing by hand even using a mixer was a slow job, so the
bloke that was fixing the concrete had plenty of time to do his job right.
What I have written
above is how we used to lay some small foundations in the early sixties, which
are much the same as we would lay foundations today, except that today we just
order concrete already mixed, but we have to be really ready with everything
and everything has got to be in the right place, because the concrete ready-mix
truck will unload its concrete very quickly, so there is no time to do anything
else except to fix the concrete at the right level as quickly as possible and as
required.
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Concreting stumps on site
Concreting stumps
on site
Now let me go back
again to the early sixties, when we were concreting these stumps on site, as
this is not done very much today, the reasons for this change it is because the
buildings have gradually changed in many ways and also today some of these
stumps can be made in a concrete factory and when cured can be delivered to the
building site, where the worker can erect them as required. There are other
reasons also and later on we will be looking at this also.
To concrete these
stumps on site we had some steel forms of various length, and these forms were
assembled together with steel pins, so we first of all we would assemble these
steel forms and then start to mix concrete, we had also make sure that the
stumps were exactly in the right place by using the marked profiles and tight
line between them.
In this case it was
an easy job for the fellow that is mixing concrete, but a lot harder for the
blokes that had to pour the concrete in the stumps formwork and make sure that
the stump was exactly in the right place and finished at the right height and
were also plumb (perfect vertical position). It was also necessary that some
reinforcing rods were placed in the right position with a purpose made devise.
These are how we made those onsite stumps in the sixties.
These concrete
stumps that we made in the sixties were better that the timber stumps that they
were replacing, because it was an improvement as they did not rot with the
passing of time and the white ants would not eat them, as they did with the
timber stumps. Here we could say that these concrete stumps on site were easy
to make, if you knew the procedure, in fact it was easier to make a set of
stumps than to fix concrete stumps made in the factory, as there was no heavy
lifting involved.
But although these
concrete stumps were easy to make, they would be hard to move to a different
position. So to anyone that is going to attempt to dig out these stumps to move
them to a new position, they better think twice because I tell you that the
part that is under the ground is a lot larger than the stumps at the top.
Remember what I said in our previous hub, we had to dig a hole sixty centimetre
dip in the natural ground, and at the bottom should be a level base not less
than forty centimetres square.
I believe that we
have said enough in this hub as we have explained the work that we did on this
affordable houses and we will be coming back to talk about more building work
in our next hub, house building in Brisbane. See you soon.
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