Bricks or blocks, which to use?

Basically as these are only considered infill and not load bearing here in Thailand there is a lot of stuff you can use to build the walls in your house.

First up we have these red blocks, I have to admit I have never seen a house built with these, well that is untill we built one, these are a bit pourous and some of them do have holes all the way through them so can have problems with the rain, but damn they look good

With these it is best to color the cement with red oxide and rough finish the joins, for some reason if you smooth finish the joins the color looks crap, plus these are more your olde worlde type blocks so the rough finish does look better.

Inside you need to render off and then it is best to use insulation and plaster board as these bricks do absorb the heat from the sun, on this one we just used the cheapy insulation plastic stuff with the reflective coating and plaster board with the reflective coating.

These 20 by 40 center meter blocks can be bought in Salaburi for 20 odd baht each, or in Pattaya for nearer 40 odd baht each.