It’s been a challenging few weeks. Surprise closure of Brick Kilns raised some concerns, but our builder assured us that there won’t be any shortage of supply. Now that our Raft foundation is complete, next step is to build a Brick Foundation, followed by Damp Proof Course (DPC).
Brick Foundation
It is built above the Raft and together they evenly distribute the weight throughout the total area. Also known as strip foundation or strip footing, brick foundation needs a solid ground to be built upon. Raft makes sure that the brick foundation has a solid ground to stand.
There are some general rules to build a brick foundation.
- Brick Foundation is built as a base of each wall in the plot.
- It should start with a width, twice the size of the wall, gradually decreasing the size in each step.
- Foundation, when approaching DPC, should be same width as the walls.
Brick foundation, above the Raft and being twice the size of wall; evenly distributes the weight of the wall and helps the structural integrity of the house.
In Our Case
As soon as the Raft was finished, our builder and his team started working on the Foundation. Amid Brick Kiln closure, the brick supply was short. Our builder arranged a batch of bricks for Brick foundation, but the quality of this first batch was just average. You can see the batch is pictures below.
We had a meeting and we decided that this batch will only be used for Brick foundation. For the rest of the project, new and better quality bricks will be arranged.
Damp-Proof Course (DPC)
Damp Proofing, as the name indicates, makes sure that the moisture doesn’t seep up into the walls. It’s very interesting phenomenon where moisture from the ground moves up into the walls, brick by brick, and it won’t stop until all the linked walls are soaking wet.
This movement (also known as capillary action) can be horizontal or vertical. We want to make sure that the moisture doesn’t rise up in the walls and we need to stop it from reaching, even the first brick of the wall.
How to do that?
Most commonly used method is Bitumen Damp Proof Course. It is a sheet of organic materials which are highly waterproof. Wherever this sheet will applied, it will make sure that the moisture under it never goes above. Bitumen DPC are also used in combination with Polyethylene sheets for additional support against moisture seepage.
As discussed in our previous blog post, we dug about 4 feet deep to start the Raft. The Raft and Brick Foundation will be under the ground and the walls will start just above the surface level. The bricks under the ground are more prone to gain moisture from the soil. To prevent seepage of moisture, we built a 9 inch concrete beam.
Once the concrete beam was settled, we applied a polythene membrane, Bituflex Paper and a Bitumen sheet. Above these, we’ll start building the walls for the ground floor of our house. Polythene, Bituflex paper and Bitumen DPC sheets will prevent any moisture from concrete beam to rise up in the walls. One more problem solved. Pheww!
You can see in the picture above that we applied DPC just before starting the construction of walls, for the first floor. We’ll discuss this in the next blog post.
