Hi All,

For the builders amongst you. I'm about to build a "shed", and would be grateful for your opinions as to what spec breeze block I should be using. I've seen these on E-Bay.

BLOCKS

They're cheaper than my local builders merchants. Any ideas/opinions would be much appreciated.

Regards, Ian.

I used 6" thick hollow blocks for my workshop.

The 4" thick solid ones will need to be double skinned, they are not really self supporting as single skin, would certainly need a lot of pillars to be stable.

When I priced it up it worked out cheaper to do a single skin of 6" blocks than a double of 4".

Speak to your local council building regs chap for the official line, but that is the long and short of it.

My garage is 10m long and 5m wide, and has a pillar at each corner and one halfway along each wall, which was ok'd by the building regs man.

I paid £700 + vat for 900 high density 6" (140mm) thick hollows (7N, there are low density solid 3.5N ones as well but these are not as strong, and solids are harder to lay) based on buying 900 blocks.

This was from Travis perkins. Most other merchants were 50% on top of that with many double the price. Straight from the manufacturers was cheaper but I needed a whole lorryload (as per the Ebay listing) and including the ones I would have left over it was more expensive.

[Edited on 11/12/06 by NS Dev]

[Edited on 11/12/06 by NS Dev]

how big a shed are you building that is 90 sq metres of blocks?

4" blocks only need a pillar every 10' if you use them as a single skin and will support themselves quite easily with 10mm joints as long as you don't try to lay too many courses in a day, which if you are laying and mixing yourself as I was, is very unlikely as they are heavy. 14 packs is a lot of blocks for a shed and would probably do the inside leaf for a 2 bedroom house.

[Edited on 11/12/06 by Peteff]