Ottawa masonry services, Concrete sidewalk, slab, cement base, wall repair, cultured stone, joints, firepit, fireplace, brick, Ottawa tuck pointing, parging services

Brick Colour:
Clay bricks typically take on a reddish hue when baking. The red hue darkens when they are heated over a longer period of time. Red bricks can have warmer or darker tones mixed in with the overall red coloring.

Different minerals and chemicals found in the raw materials for the bricks can create other colors besides red, however. Pink bricks are created from clay high in iron. When the clay is fired, the reaction from the heat with the iron gives the hardened clay a pink tint that is too light to be called red. Bricks with a light, whitish or yellow tint occur when the clay has a high lime content instead of being high in iron.

Ottawa Suppliers:

City of Ottawa Hazardous Waste Depot schedule/locations

Merkley Supply
Brick, stone, cultured stone, cements, etc.
Corner of Bayview & Scott Street.

Ottawa Brick & Stone
Brick, stone, cultured stone, cements, etc.
Corner of Innes & Startop Road.

Canlok Stone - interlocking natural stone.
950 Moodie Drive.

Permacon interlocking products

Video - installing interlocking stone

Permacon's Technical Guide to installing their products

Boucher Precast Concrete - 5598 Power Rd

Swing N Scaff Inc., 1485 St. Laurent Blvd

Scaffold-Fast - 1500 Michael Street

Busy Bee Machine Tools, 1400 Ages Dr

Preston Hardware, Preston St.

Richelieu Hardware, 940 Belfast Road, Specialty Home Products

Euro Ceramics - a good tile showroom - 925 Belfast Road.

Tomlinson's LEED Recycling Facility, best in Eastern Ontario

Maurice Yelle, aggregates, 1571 Startop Rd.

City-owned Landfills

STGuitarworks - Ottawa Guitar Repair

Thermal Expansion Rates
Concrete frames and concrete masonry units shrink with time. Clay bricks, on the other hand, expand with time.
The different materials in your house are continually expanding and contracting, at different rates. A shrub's shadow can affect heat absorbtion. Here are the specific heat capacities of various building materials.

Substance c_p
J/(g�K)

Asphalt 0.920

Brick 0.840

Concrete 0.880

Glass, silica 0.840

Glass, crown 0.670

Glass, flint 0.503

Glass, pyrex 0.753

Granite 0.790

Gypsum 1.090

Marble, mica 0.880

Sand 0.835

Soil 0.800

Wood (spruce pine) 1.7 (1.2 to 2.3)

Cement Cracking:
Client education information by the Concrete Foundation Association

masonrymagazine.com:
Controlling Shrinkage Cracks in Concrete Masonry Walls, Masonry Control Joints

Masonry Training, Organisations:

Masonry Training Program
Heritage and Traditional (Algonquin @ Perth Campus)

Canada Masonry Centre

The (USA) Masonry Society

The Brick Industry Association (US)

National Concrete Masonry Association (US)

The Masonry Society (international interest group)

Mason Contractors.org

Dry Stone Walling Association of Canada

A tip for your house:
Fill the weeping holes in the bottom course of bricks with folded window screen to keep debris and insects from getting behind your brick walls, and to continue to let air flow through the hole. The weeping hole keeps the humidity of the air behind the bricks equal with the outside air. Efflorescence can occur with a moisture imbalance.

The Ontario Building Code, Ottawa City Permits:

The Ontario Building Code

City of Ottawa's central page for Building Permits.

The following are typical projects that require a City of Ottawa Building Permit:

* A deck that is adjacent to or attached to the house and its walking surface is more than 600 mm (24 in.) above the adjacent grade
* An elevated deck providing principal access to a building
* A deck that is independent from the house and has a surface greater than 10 square metres and more than 24 in. above grade
* Attached or detached garages and sheds
* Installation of solid fuel appliances (i.e. woodstoves and fireplaces)
* Sunrooms, solariums and porches
* Alterations to a plumbing system (except replacing fixtures)
* Structural foundation repairs
* Demolition
* Interior and exterior structural alterations, such as,
o adding or removing walls, i.e., creating different room sizes and/or uses
o one and two storey additions
o new windows where there were none before
o enlarging or relocating a window or door
o finishing a basement
* Installation of cleanouts and backwater valves
* Conversion from septic to sanitary sewer
* Equipment storage buildings
* Cover all type structures (fabric / hoop)