Brickwork for Apartment Blocks and Flats

Multi-storey residential brickwork

Apartment blocks and flats bring the same trade skills as housing, on a bigger and more repetitive scale. Elevations are longer, there are more openings to keep in line from floor to floor, and the brickwork sits inside a tighter sequence with frame, floors, roof and cladding trades. We work off the scaffold lift by lift and keep pace with the programme the main contractor sets.

Our photographed work so far is mainly housing, including three-storey townhouses built off full scaffold with dormers and tall gables, and larger public-sector buildings with brick cladding. That experience carries straight across to low and mid-rise flats: accurate setting out, openings held plumb over several storeys, and a clean finish on large areas of facing brick.

Getting multi-storey work right

On a block of flats small errors add up. A window opening that drifts a few millimetres on each floor ends up visibly out of line at the top. Gauge that isn't held means courses don't meet the floor levels, lintel bearings or stone details where the drawings put them. We set out from the drawings and grid lines, carry gauge rods and datum levels up the building, and check openings for plumb as each lift rises.

Where the brickwork is a cladding outer leaf to a frame, we fix the ties and restraints the designer has specified and leave the movement joints where the drawings put them. Where the building uses load-bearing masonry walls, we build the blockwork to the specification for each floor. The unit "Erecting masonry cladding in the workplace" in Kris's NVQ covers brick and block cladding, including to a pre-erected timber frame.

Programme and coordination

Flats are usually programme-driven, with other trades waiting on each lift. We agree the sequence with the site manager before we start: which elevations first, when each scaffold lift will be ready, and where materials are loaded out. If a lift isn't ready, or a drawing query holds us up, we raise it straight away rather than on the day it hits the programme.

We keep the scaffold clear and tidy, stack materials where the scaffold design allows, and leave each lift ready for the next trade. Loading scaffold with bricks and blocks is done within the limits the scaffold contractor sets.

What we need from you

For an accurate price we need elevations and floor plans, the brick and block specification, details of any cladding support or ties, and the target programme. Send what you have and we'll come back with questions or a price.

Finish on large elevations

Big areas of facing brick show everything. Uneven perpends, a change in joint thickness between lifts, or a patch of bricks from a different batch will all be visible from the street for the life of the building. We blend bricks from several packs as we go, keep the joint size and pointing profile consistent from the first lift to the last, and take care where one day's work meets the next so there's no visible tide line. Scaffold putlog and tie positions are made good neatly when the scaffold comes down, where that's part of our package. The aim is an elevation that reads as one wall, not a series of lifts.