Once the frame and slabs are up, the walls go in — the brickwork stage that turns a skeleton into rooms. It is labour-intensive and uses a lot of material, so understanding it helps you estimate accurately and supervise quality.
Choosing bricks
The main options in India are traditional first-class red clay bricks, valued for strength and a proven track record, and fly-ash or concrete bricks, which are more uniform in size, often cheaper, and more environmentally friendly. A standard modular brick is about 190 × 90 × 90 mm, but sizes vary by region and supplier — always confirm the actual size, because it changes your brick count. Whatever you choose, good bricks should be well-formed, uniform, and ring sharply when struck.
Wall thicknesses
Walls are described by thickness. A half-brick (4.5-inch) wall is used for internal partitions and non-load-bearing walls. A full-brick (9-inch) wall is used for load-bearing and external walls, giving more strength, better weather resistance and sound insulation. In a framed (RCC) building most walls are non-load-bearing infill, so thickness is chosen for function rather than structure — thicker external walls, thinner internal partitions.
The mortar
Bricks are bonded with cement-sand mortar, typically a 1:6 mix for ordinary internal walls and a stronger 1:4 for load-bearing or external walls. A useful principle: the mortar should be slightly weaker than the bricks, so any cracking occurs in the replaceable joint rather than through the bricks. Joints should be about 10 mm and fully filled. Like all mortar, it should be used within a couple of hours of mixing and the bricks wetted before laying so they do not suck water out of the mortar.
Estimating the materials
As a rule of thumb, a cubic metre of brickwork takes about 500 standard bricks plus mortar. So a 3 × 3 m full-brick wall (around 2 m³) needs roughly 1,000 bricks. Always add a wastage allowance — about 5% — because breakage and cutting at corners and openings are unavoidable. The mortar between the bricks is then split into cement and sand by the chosen ratio, using the 1.33 dry-volume factor for mortar.
Quality on site
Good brickwork is straight, plumb and level, with consistent joints and proper bonding (overlapping bricks course to course so vertical joints do not line up). Check the corners are true and the courses level as the wall rises. Leave the openings for doors and windows as per the plan, with lintels over them to carry the wall load above. Cure the finished brickwork by keeping it damp for a few days, just as you would concrete — it helps the mortar gain strength.
Pace and weather
Brickwork should not be raised too fast in a single day — a freshly laid wall is heavy and the mortar below has not yet set, so building more than about a metre to a metre and a half of height per day risks the wall bulging or going out of plumb under its own weight. In hot weather, both bricks and the completed wall need wetting to stop the mortar drying before it cures; in heavy rain, fresh work should be protected so the mortar is not washed out. These are small disciplines, but they separate a wall that stands true for decades from one that develops cracks and bulges within a few years.