Inside Third & Bond: Week 92

Hudson Companies updates us today on the brickwork…
It’s fun to watch the masons at work on Third + Bond. They have a steady rhythm as they slop on mortar, snug in a brick and whisk away excess mortar in a seamless motion. Meanwhile, down below their scaffolds there are the sounds of workers banging buckets of mortar, setting down loads of brick, and knocking hard hats into the low bars of the scaffold. The foreman shouts directions up at the masons who obey without bothering to look down. From inside the building, on view by the masons through the window, there’s the electric whine of screws tightening into drywall.

Everything feels purposeful and steady. There’s a sense of satisfaction at lunch break. The weather is beautiful, as if a reward for rainy June. The building is taking shape and the end for some trades is already in sight. It’s almost as if we’ve established a momentum which allows the building to continue to grow at night while we aren’t around.

But that’s ridiculous…

…and it’s dangerous to be lulled by a few days or weeks or even months of steady accomplishment. Getting to the point where the masons could be in rhythm took a few stops and starts. Another stop might be on its way: our next brick delivery is on backorder.

We started the on-site brick work by having the mason subcontractor, Turano, build a mock-up. The mock-up is a couple of 3′ x 4′ sections of brick built by the subcontractor to allow us to check his work, re-examine our brick choice, and finalize the mortar color and amount between bricks.

Turano made us three mock-ups: brown mortar, red mortar and gray mortar. We settled on brown as the most subtle and best match for the chocolate brown metal panels also incorporated into the façade. The gray mortar would have clashed with the brown panels. The red mortar with the red brick and red metal panels would have been too much red.

Then the Turano masons got to work. After a few feet of brick were up, we observed discrepancies not to our liking. Turned out that there were bricks in the delivery that were a half inch larger than the majority of bricks. For the brick façade to look good, we needed regularity. So the work ground to a halt while we checked the rest of the delivery for oversized bricks, questioned the supplier, and talked with the subcontractor about process.

The ASTM standard (American Society of Testing and Materials) provides a voluntary industry standard for pretty much all building materials. The brick standard describes what bricks can be made out of, how they should stand up to the freeze-thaw cycle, and many other characteristics. Among them is a description of the tolerances or size discrepancies allowed in a given load.
It’s sort of like how there can be so much armadillo in the Heinz ketchup before production is called to a stop.

We were worried that someone in the chain of brick supply used leftovers from a previous job, mixing them in with our real order, to save money. This certainly happens. But upon closer review of the supply, the big bricks were just within the allowed tolerance. Since we couldn’t ask better from the supplier than ASTM (at least not without a cost) we mitigated the issue on site by asking the mason to cast aside any odd sized bricks.

So the masons are back to slopping, plopping, and scraping. All these challenges: just another brick in the wall.

What you’re seeing in the photo: In the first photo, the aqua color is the waterproofing applied to the superstructure panels. The green Perm-A-Barrier is window flashing; an added layer of protection around the window penetration to keep water from sneaking inside. A smidgen of the Roxul (mineral wool insulation) can be seen poking out between the Perm-A-Barrier and the brick. The window is set inside the superstructure and the brick is applied afterward. The string across the brick is a guide to check that the bricks are level. In the other photo, the use of the string is a bit more apparent.

Inside Third & Bond: Weeks 1-90 [Brownstoner]
The complete offering terms are in an Offering Plan available from Sponsor. File No. CD080490. Sponsor: Hudson Third LLC, 826 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.