How strong are block pavers?

[Ninemill]

I'm currently having a small extension built on to the back of my house and we started laying the first course of blocks yesterday.

These blocks took me to about 50mm from the brick courses (imperial) on the main building that I'm trying to match up to. I was intending on buying a few 40mm high 'engineering brick slips' from the merchants to get me to the required height, but I've now found they've been discontinued.

I was wondering how resistant concrete block pavers are, as they're the right height - or whether there's anything else of a similar size that I could use?

The only alternative is that I can see at the moment that would get me to the right height is 3 courses of 65 engineering.

Thanks, t.

 

[noseall]

Begs the question - why was the concrete not set at the correct height in block/brick courses down from dpc?

Or.....

Why did you not try and sort this anomaly below ground immediately when building off the concrete?

Surely this masonry will be seen, i.e. the bit that is above ground and below dpc?

Bonkers!

 

[noseall]

Are you saying that the foundation concrete level has been set to within three brick courses of dpc?

 

[Ninemill]

Foundation concrete was supposed to be set at 1 block and 4 imperial courses below dpc, it's ended up about 40mm higher than it should have been.

In hindsight I should have cut all the blocks in the 1st course down a bit, but I measured and decided that 1 course of block and 1 course of 40mm bricks from the yard would sort it out easily - until I found the yard didn't stock them any more.

The 40mm bricks would still be below ground level, but obviously if I used 3 courses of 65mm engineering instead then they would have to match the imperial reds that the rest of the building is going to be constructed from.

 

[noseall]

We always course up dpc in metric masonry regardless of what is going on above dpc and it does not look odd.

As is often the case, the sub-dpc masonry can differ greatly from that above. A change at dpc is no biggie.

 

[Ninemill]

Yeah I thought it would probably look fine, I just wish I'd chopped that 40mm off the blocks yesterday before they went in.

Apart from aesthetics, the reason for wanting something thin so that I can course up in the old imperials is that I'll be paying twice for the bricks - once for the imperials and again for the metrics I need to sort out the levels!

 

[pred]

Matching Brick Company. The name says it all!