Hi all,
I am going to start building an outdoor BBQ next weekend out of concrete blocks. It is about 1900mm wide, around 850mm deep, block legs each end and a block central leg in the middle. I have laid a few bricks/ blocks before but nothing on this scale. Looking at some online videos to work out the best way to arrange the blocks, make sure it is square etc. it advises to do the corners first (although given the small size I think that may be irrelevant) but also to ensure "half bonding". As far as I can make out, the principle being that blocks should straddle 2 blocks below half on each one. This is alright in practice but when the width isn't a full number of blocks and I need to incorporate the middle leg this seems to be a bit too complicated.
For the corner, the videos suggest adding a 100mm block "offcut" next to the edge of the block that runs front to back (F2B) and then a full block next to the offcut. So you get 100mm (F2B block edge), 20mm cement, 100mm offcut = width of half a block. Another video suggested not to bother cutting blocks and use a house brick positioned vertically but that would either mean the width (left to right) is now 65mm (instead of the 100mm) or the depth (F2B) is 65mm and therefore not flush to the blocks front and back.
That being the easiest part of my confusion ( :) ), heaven knows what I am supposed to do at the centre leg or indeed where I need to use part blocks because the width/ depth aren't full block friendly.
Anyone have any idea how to achieve this? Having said that, given the size of the structure (it has back, left and right sides only - i.e. open front for obvious reasons :) ) and it is only about 2.5m high and non-load bearing maybe I don't need to worry about all this and just make the corners without the "offcuts" and overlap as best I can?
Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Lee.