Brickwork variant joints, is it normal?

[Noah1234]

Hi Everyone,

I hired someone who claimed to be a professional bricklayer to build a garden outbuilding. I opted for single brick wall instead of blocks because I wanted that nice look of brickwork, even though bricks cost double the price for bricks and labour.

Now there are a few problems. Joints are not fully identical, bigger in some places. Spaces vary between 5 to 20 mm, a few places they are 0 ! And he keeps telling me that its normal and if i look closely at any brickwork I will find variations. Is that true?! Now I'm a bit hysterical, staring at every single house nearby trying to see if they are actually the same as what this builder is doing.

Now when we got to lintel, he measured and it is less than the size that I asked him to do, by 40 mm, even though I told him the size many times before and gave him the frame.

So he took off 2 corner course and increased the joint to 30 mm and we measured and again short of about 20 mm

Is it normal not use spacers and something for identical joints?

 

[Charlie George]

Brick joints and beds are normally 10mm you can be a couple of millimetre out,but yours seems too much. you don't use spacers just a tape measure and the ability to use it, put a photo up will be easier to see what the problems are.

 

[Noah1234]

Thank you for your reply.
It makes me feel better to know that a couple of millimeters are not a big deal in brickwork. I come from a tiling background and I probably keep comparing bricks to tiles!
I will take a photo in the Morning.

 

[Charlie George]

It makes me feel better to know that a couple of millimeters are not a big deal in brickwork

your brickwork is a lot more than a couple of mill out though

 

[Notch7]

Now there are a few problems. Joints are not fully identical, bigger in some places. Spaces vary between 5 to 20 mm, a few places they are 0 ! And he keeps telling me that its normal and if i look closely at any brickwork I will find variations. Is that true?! Now I'm a bit hysterical, staring at every single house nearby trying to see if they are actually the same as what this builder is doing

Do you mean horizontal or vertical joints?

Horizontal joints should all be the same, around 10mm. The perps should be the same, but the setout sometimes means a bit of a variation.

Are the perpend vertical?

Setting out brickwork is quite skilled, perhaps he doesnt have the experience, its one of those things that if not started correctly can end up going badly wrong

 

[Noah1234]

The problem is with horizontal joints. The beds.
Some of the vertical ones have no joints because the builder couldn't be bothered to cut the brick and just squeezed it in.

I have decided to live with the joints problem and find a solution in the future.

The brick layer left and now I have other problems! I started to put the flat roof and the corners are not squared. I have a parallelogram.

The mortar in the top 2 courses is crumbling 2 dust when rubbed between my fingers.

I found a solution to the roof. I will add more joists and create 2 triangles on both sides.

If the top 2 courses have less cement, will that be dangerous in any way?

The top 2 courses are engineering bricks

 

[wwwebber]

How is this a DIY disaster if you hired someone to do the work ???