Free English Class! Topic: Building Materials! 🧱🔩👷‍♂️ (Lesson Only)

Well hello and welcome to this English lesson about building

materials. Remember my job isn't to teach the exciting

English lessons only but to teach every English lesson. So

today's lesson will be about building materials. Bricks and

stone and blocks and all those kinds of things. I think you'll

enjoy it. And I think it will be a good lesson for everyone.

Um I actually worked in construction many many years

ago. When I was a university student when I was home in the

summer. For three summers worked for a guy who did

renovations. And then for another couple of summers I

worked for my uncle who built barns and houses and sheds. So

I do know a little bit about construction although it's

probably changed a bit. But anyways once again welcome to

this English lesson about building materials. Brick. So

I'm going to talk about building materials. A very

common building material in this part of the world is

brick. When we build houses in particular we often will use

brick on the side. People will hire a brick layer to lay

bricks in order to build the outside of the wall. I should

mention as well this lesson on building materials is going to

be very North American and some of the things might even be

very local just to my area. Sometimes people call things

different things in different parts of the world. I'll try to

mention that when I know it. But as far as I know bricks are

just bricks almost everywhere in the world. So if you want to

build a wall you'll get some mortar. You'll hire a brick

layer. He'll make mortar, he'll put bricks on the wall, he will

lay the bricks and you will end up with a brick wall. If you

use this though, you will be building a block wall. So this

is what we would call a block. We sometimes call it a cement

block. These are great for building walls. But they're

also really great because they're heavy. So if you need

to tie something down out in a field a cement block works

really really well. So if you build a wall with these you

have a brick wall. If you build a wall with these you have a

block wall. And sometimes it's a little more difficult but

sometimes people will use stone to build a wall. So you can see

here in this picture stone every stone has a different

shape. So it's a little more challenging to build a wall

with stone. Locks are rectangular. Bricks are

rectangular. So it's a little easier. But sometimes the look

when you're done is just amazing. So sometimes people

decide to spend a little extra money. And build a from stone

even though it takes longer. And of course if you do any of

this work you need what's called mortar. So mortar is a

substance made out of water and sand and cement and it goes

between the bricks or between the blocks and it's usually a

little bit wet when you put it on and when it dries it becomes

hard. So mortar again is something that brick layers use

or you could use yourself if you were laying bricks or

blocks To kind of connect everything together. And all of

this is referred to as masonry. So when you have some masonry

work done on your house. Or if you say our new house is almost

done. They just need to do the masonry. You're talking about

bricks or blocks or stone. Anything that gets put together

with mortar. We would refer to as masonry. If you watch my

other videos you'll sometimes see my house in the background.

And our house is has masonry. It has brick. It is a almost

all of the exterior walls have brick on them except for one

small part on the roof. If you watch the video where I go on

the roof you'll see that there's a little bit of siding

up there instead of masonry. Uh there is something in the world

called concrete. So concrete is a very very cool building

material. Concrete comes in a semi-liquid form. It flows and

it can come in a concrete truck or we call it a cement truck.

Um and when you pour concrete you pour it into something

where you have forms and then you smooth it out and then you

wait a day or two and it dries to a very hard hard

consistency. It's almost like stone when it dries. So

concrete is made from cement, a little bit of sand, a little

bit of stone. We sometimes call it aggregate. It's all mixed

together with water to form concrete and then you will pour

it into a form smooth it all out with a trowel and a few

days later you will have a beautiful sidewalk or step into

your house or even a concrete wall. Sometimes they make walls

out of concrete as well. And something that goes in with

concrete. Often when we pour concrete we use something

called rebar to reinforce the concrete. Actually don't know

but maybe rebar is short for reinforcement bar. I'm not

sure. But certainly when you pour concrete and you have

steel in the concrete it's a much more durable building

material. Uh I think it's called steel reinforced

concrete. And it's very very hard. Most bridges and tall

skyscrapers are made using rebar and concrete together

because the mixture of the strength of and the strength of

concrete creates something that's even stronger. I think.

Um in Canada we still build a lot of our houses using wood.

Our house is primarily built out of wood. The walls have

wood in them. The floors are wood. The roof has wood in it.

Because Canada has a lot of trees. One of our primary

building materials is wood. You would buy boards. That's how we

refer to wood in general. You would buy the right size boards

in order to build your house. Here's an interesting fact. In

Canada we use the metric system. But when we build

things like houses we still use what we call imperial. We use

inches and feet. So in Canada when you go and buy a piece of

wood you buy an eight foot piece of wood or a 10 foot

piece of wood. We also reference the dimensions in

inches. A two by four is a little under two inches by 4

inches. It's actually an inch and a half by three and a half.

A two by six is the measure for the next size board. So in

Canada we use the metric system but when you buy wood when you

buy boards you still use inches in feet for some reason. You

need to be bilingual with your measurements in Canada. But yes

in my part of the world especially most houses are

built with wood. Most apartment buildings and tall buildings

are built using concrete and or steel reinforced concrete. So

we refer to the wood in a wall that goes up and down as a

stud. Now this has other meanings as well. Um but a stud

is the board that goes up and down in the wall. It's usually

a two by four or a two by six. Um and when you go to hang

pictures on the wall sometimes you use a device called a stud

finder. So you can kind of know where the stud is. So when you

put a screw or nail in the wall it hits it. But the wood the

that go up and down in a wall are called studs. And sometimes

you have to cover things and you buy something called

plywood. So as I mentioned we do use the imperial system of

measurement for wood. When you buy plywood you usually buy a

four by eight sheet of plywood. So that would be four feet wide

and eight feet long. This guy has a four by eight sheet of

plywood on his cart. He's probably going home to put that

on the wall of his shed or some other place plywood is a very

very handy building material it's made of thin layers of

wood that are glued together to become a very strong board

plywood is very handy it's one of my favorite building

materials because you can build a desk with plywood you can

build a trailer with plywood you can build almost anything

you want with plywood The wood in your floor the boards that

are on edge are called a joist. So in this picture you can see

the floor joists are all lined up. Wood is very very strong

when you put it on edge. So we often build the first part of

our floors in our houses using joist. Um so a joist is made

out of wood. It can be made out of steel as well. I should

mention this. Studs and joists. Everything I'm talking about

can also be made out of steel. It's just not as common in

Canada. So Sometimes when you walk in someone's house the

floor will squeak in one spot and you might say oh you have a

squeaky floor joist. Should I say joist one more time? It's a

hard word to say joist. And then on the top of your house

you'll have what we call a truss. Or here you can see a

lot of trusses. That would be the plural form. Uh when we

build houses with wood when we get to the point where we're

building the roof. We will put up a series of trusses. And

then we will cover the trusses with plywood and later roofing

materials. So you'll see here this house is being built right

now. They have put up the trusses and they will soon put

on the rest of the roof. So when you put two boards

together you can use a nail or you can use a screw. A nail is

usually put in with a hammer. So you bang a nail in or you

hammer the nail in. You can use the word hammer as a verb as

well. But many times when you buy two pieces of wood or when

you have two pieces of wood and you need to connect them you

will nail them together. So you will bang a nail in or hit a

nail in with a hammer. Sometimes though it's nicer to

use a screw. A screw you would put in with a screwdriver by

hand. But I usually put a a screwdriver bit in my drill and

I put screws in using a drill. It's a lot easier that way.

When you do it by hand it takes quite a while. Um so generally

when you need to fasten wood together you can use a nail.

You can nail two pieces together or you can screw two

pieces of wood together. You can also use it as a verb. So

I'm going to screw a few boards onto my barn before winter

because some fell off. So I'm going to use screws to screw

the wood onto the barn. So you can use it as a verb and a

noun. There you go. We also sometimes use nuts and bolts.

So the bolt is the long thing. And it's threaded. That means

that as a nut will turn and go onto the bolt. So again the

bolt is the long thing. The nut is the small thing that goes on

the end. Sometimes you might drill a hole through a couple

pieces of wood and put a nut or put a bolt through and a nut on

the end. And you might even use a washer which is a flat piece

of metal. That you can put on the other end to go between the

materials the nut so it holds better. When you're building

any kind of house you need plumbing you need someone to

come and put a pipe here and there. Um it's good to get all

the plumbing done while the walls are still open. Because

then the plumber can drill holes and can run pipe through

the walls. So here you see a plumber who is putting pipes in

the wall. He has already drilled some holes in the

studs. And he is now putting in pipes or you could just say

he's putting in the plumbing. Plumbing would refer pipes that

bring water to your sinks and taps. Plumbing also takes away

waste from your toilet and from your drains of your sinks. So

plumbing refers to all of the pipes that bring water where

you need it. And then takes away the waste water after

you've used it. And then of course you need an electrician

to come in to do the wiring. He will put wires in the walls and

in the floors. So that you can have electricity in your house.

An electrician run wires. They'll install receptacles.

They'll install light fixtures. They'll connect everything to a

breaker box in your basement usually. Uh and then your your

house will have electricity. It's really really handy to

have electricity. If I didn't have electricity there would be

no livestream right now. It is a very very important invention

in the world if that's what you would call it. Maybe discovery

an important Anyways the electrician will run wires.

We're going to use the verb to run. The the electrician will

run wires in your walls and install all of the receptacles

that you need. Sometimes you will put in conduit, conduit is

simply a special kind of pipe that you put electrical wires

inside of. So in certain places in my house I have conduit so

that I can have a wire through the pipe and if I wanted to put

another wire in later it's very very easy. So conduit is simply

a special kind of pipe that lets you put wire in right away

or later. It's very very handy. See where I'm at here. Your

electrician will also install as I said electrical boxes. An

electrical box is the metal box that goes in the wall.

Sometimes it's made out of plastic. Uh and that box will

later have light switches or receptacles. We sometimes call

them outlets as well installed. So that you can turn lights on

or you can plug things in. So the electrician will run wires

to the electrical box. And then install a things later. In

Canada it gets really cold in the winter and it actually gets

quite warm in the summer. So when we build anything we

usually use insulation. This is a very common building material

in Canada. Sometimes we put insulation in the wall like

this. We buy fiberglass insulation and install it by

hand. Sometimes they will spray insulation into the wall. Um

using spray foam insulation. And I don't have a picture of

that. But a very important part of building a house or any kind

of building in Canada is to make sure you have insulation.

So when you heat your house in the winter the heat doesn't

escape. And when you cool your house in the summer the cold

air doesn't escape. You want to keep the hot air inside your

house in the winter. And you want to keep the cool air

inside your house in the summer for sure to keep things either

warm or cool depending on the season. But yeah insulation

comes in bats so this guy has installed some bats of

insulation and he will install a few more bats like BAT bats

of insulation in the wall We also in this part of the world

put plastic on our walls after we put insulation on. And this

is called a vapour barrier. Notice in Canada we spell

vapour with a U. In America you spell vapour without a U. But a

vapour barrier is simply plastic that we put on the wall

to prevent moisture from either exiting or entering the house.

So it's to block vapour, humidity, moisture, water

essentially in the air. It's important to have vapor barrier

on your walls in the summer and in the winter. So in Canada

when we put stuff on the wall like these guys are doing it's

usually called drywall. It's just a grey board. It's usually

four feet by 8 feet. Sometimes it's four feet by 10 or four

feet by 12. Um and we call it drywall. In other parts of the

world it might be called gypsum board. It might be called wall

board. It has a number of different names. It's not the

final thing. When you look behind me there is also a

little bit of what we would call drywall compound to smooth

it out and there's also paint on the wall but behind the

paint here and here there is drywall on the wall. So again

it can be called gypsum board wall board it might have a

different name where you live but when you build a home you

often will start to finish off the wall by installing drywall.

And then this isn't done as much anymore. In days past

people used to plaster their walls. It's a lot more common

here now to just install drywall. And to smooth the

drywall out with a little bit it's not plaster. We call it

drywall compound. Um but plastering is when you put

small boards on the wall and then you put a substance on

that's a little more like it's a little more like mortar. It's

not mortar but it's a substance where it spreads on smoothly

like butter almost. And then dries to a hard consistency.

You can see this guy's put some plaster on the wall Floor tile.

So when you finish off a floor you use all different kinds of

flooring. You might use carpet like they're doing here. You

might use floor tile like they're doing here. All of this

would be referred to as flooring. So sometimes people

put floor tile in their bathrooms. They might put other

kinds of flooring in other parts of the house. They might

even put hardwood flooring in their kitchens or other places.

But anything that goes on the floor

would be called flooring. Um sometimes on the outside of the

house in different parts of this country they will put

something on called house wrap. Housewrap is a little bit like

vapour barrier but on the outside it does allow I think

it blocks wind but it does allow the house to breathe

still a little bit. Um but you've probably seen this

somewhere in your in the world. It's either called house wrap

or home wrap or it has various names but it's the thing that

goes on the outside of the house after the wood is put on.

On the inside when the walls are all done you will of course

paint the walls. Some people still put wallpaper on their

walls but it's not as common. It's very common in my part of

the world for people to paint their walls and then to repaint

every once in a while. Sometimes people will paint

their walls and then five years later they won't like the

colour and so they'll paint it a different colour. It's very

cheap to paint. It's a nice way to change a room quickly. To

change the look of a room quickly. There are other ways

to make things look nice. Sometimes you will stain wood.

So stain is a special substance that makes wood look darker. Or

to make it look a little more glossy. You see how this wood

is a little reflective down here. So they're putting either

a coat of stain. We also have things called varitane and

urethane. I'm not going to get into that. But stain is what

you use to make a wood look darker. So this wood is being

stained so that it has a look to it. It also protects the

wood as well. And then of course you need to install a

window here and there and a door here and there. These are

also considered building materials. If you were building

a house you would go to a place like Home Depot. And you would

buy a window. You would buy a door and then you would install

the window. These guys are installing this window. These

guys are installing this door. That's the verb you would use

to talk about it. So you would buy a window and then install

it. You would buy a door and then install it. And then

around the doors and windows we put what's called trim. So this

person is installing the trim around this door. Where the

wall or drywall meets the opening where the door goes.

It's nice to cover it up with some trim. So when you put trim

in a house you put it along the bottoms of the walls. This is

called baseboard. But it also can just be called trim. And

this is the trim here as well. You can see we painted our trim

white. Our trim Used to be stained a dark brown but we

decided that if we painted it white it would look a little

more modern. So when it's when you are done installing the

door poking my nose when you're done installing the door and

you've done well you don't have to be done painting then you

install trim around the door just to make it look nice. On

the roof of our houses in my part of the world we will often

install shingles. A shingle is something made out of tar and a

little bit of stone and a mixture of paper and it's

waterproof. I think it's paper. Um and it's installed to

prevent your roof from leaking. Shingles are very very common

in most parts of North America. It's probably the cheapest way

to finish the roof of your house off. If you do watch the

video where I'm on the roof I'm standing on my roof and my roof

is covered with shingles. In other of the world and in some

places in Canada people will use roof tile. So roof tiles

are usually made out of clay or another durable substance. Um

it's not as common here but some people do use tile. I know

in some parts of the world it is the most common way to cover

a roof when you're done building your house. We also in

Canada sometimes will have metal roofs. This is very

popular in a place like Quebec City. Some of the older houses

have metal roofs. Um metal roof is a little bit expensive. Last

time Jen and I needed our shingles replaced we priced out

metal roofing and it was double. So we just put new

shingles on instead. I wish I had put metal on though because

metal roofing lasts a long time. Uh whereas shingles you

have to replace every 10 to 20 years. Hopefully not less than

10 years. That would be quite expensive.

And then of course on the outside of the house we talked

about brick but you can also put siding. Siding can be made

out of wood. Siding can be made out of vinyl. Siding can be

made out of almost anything that is durable. Something that

can be outside for many years and look nice. So this person

is installing the siding. They're putting siding on the

house. It's probably a vinyl siding. Um it might be metal as

well. Some people have metal siding. Wood siding, vinyl

siding. There are a lot of different types of siding that

people will put on a house. And then of course you need to put

on what I call evestroth. But what most people in the world I

think call gutters or rain gutters. We call these things

the things that collect the water when it rains. We call

them evestrophs. Should I say it one more time? Evestroths.

That's the plural. Um this guy's putting on an evestroph.

Um it's a little hard for me to say. An evestroph is connected

to downspouts. The pipe going down is called a downspout. And

it's used to Um direct the rainwater away from the house

when it rains. So I don't know if eavesdrop is a Canadian word

but I know gutter is maybe a little more popular around the

world. Eaves trough sounds nicer doesn't it? I think so.

Inside of a house if you don't want to paint you might put up

paneling. Uh this was a little more popular in the seventies.

Parts of this house when my parents built it in the early

80s had paneling. Wood paneling in some of the rooms. We took

it all down and put paint on the wall instead. Uh but you

might have an area in your house where you have paneling

as well. So paneling is just usually wood that you put on

the wall to make it look nice. This looks very pleasant. Maybe

paneling will come back in style soon. We'll have to see.

Another building material that you might use in a variety of

ways is just something called adhesive. You can also call it

glue if it's called glue but anything that makes two things

stick together. So this person has a tube of adhesive. They're

putting adhesive on the back of a piece of wood paneling and

then they're going to stick it to the wall. Um or they're

going to put up paneling using adhesive. So again adhesive is

Something that makes two things stick together so that you

can't pull them apart. And then once you have your windows and

doors installed you'll usually put caulking around them.

Caulking is like a very small bead. Sometimes it's made out

of silicone. And it just stops air from getting in. You don't

you don't want to have drafts in your house. You want to make

sure that you've sealed all the little holes. To keep out the

wind, the cold, insects, anything that might try to get

in. So caulking is like a little like a like a paste that

you put on. It eventually gets a little bit hard but it's

important to also put new caulking around your windows

every five or 10 years or at least check them to make sure

it hasn't disappeared.