Just been having my first stab at bricklaying this last weekend. It was a sunny day, over 70 degrees.
Question: When laying bricks on a hot day is it best to use a slighty wetter mortar mix than normal? Not excessively so, just an extra dash of water.
Bruce
No - just make sure that the bricks are well soaked before you lay them.
Either that, or work faster :-) IME the whole bricklaying thing is based on suction. You slap the brick down, adjust the position and, if you can't then easily pull the brick off by gripping the top, you'll have a good bond. If you move it too much in the adjustment, you break the suction, and you need to re-lay the mortar
I am a complete punter, but my guess would be that its better to cover up the brick work or dampen later to slow the curing to a reasonable rate.
I think its the rate of curing which is important.
I was doing some pointing (indian stone flags) this weekend and had similar problems in that the surface went off too quickly and but the lower stuff had not gone off - this made brushing off trickier than normal.
I also find that when using a mixer the mix can go from "perfect" to very sloppy with only a small amount of additional water.
Alex.
When the builders built a rear wall and dwarf wall for our conservatory they just wet the bricks on the sunny days, dunking bottom edge in bucket of water. Mind you they really zipped along and did over 3/4 of the job 2nd day which was rainy/drizzely working under a larger tarpaulin, probably as they didn't need to dampen the bricks and didn't get too hot whilst working.
Cement cures by chemical reaction and not by evaporation; if the water dries out before the chemical reaction takes place then the mortar willbe not much better than sand. I learnt this the hard way! Use Rob Morley's tip!
NO
Get some Hussein sacks cover over the newly laid bricks and keep wet.
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If they're good enough for Iraqi bricklayers they'll probably cope with British summers.
Owain
Look If wont to drape a wall with a wet Asian sack I will They are cheaper and better then the real thing !
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Yeah! he plays for Chelsea/
Bobby
This advice will make a real mess, maybe not for a profesional, but definatly for an ameter.
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