Block vs Brick vs Poured Concrete for a Kingston Home Build

Key Takeaways

Treat this as a set of decisions: block or poured concrete for the walls, poured concrete for the foundation, columns, beams and slab, and brick, if you want it, as a facing. Your drawings settle which is which.

So the useful question is which parts of your build are poured, what block your engineer specified, and whether the wall gets built the way the drawings say. Workmanship decides more here than material choice does.

Is this really a three-way choice?

Usually not, and that is worth saying plainly before you spend a week comparing them. A block house already contains poured concrete. The foundation is poured, the columns are poured, the beams are poured, the slab is poured. The block sits between those elements.

So when somebody asks whether to build in block or in concrete, the honest answer is that they are probably doing both, and the decision in front of them is narrower than the question suggests. That is a better conversation to have with an engineer than a materials debate.

What none of this can tell you is what your own house needs. Wall thickness, steel size and spacing, column positions and foundation design belong to a qualified structural engineer looking at your site and your drawings. Anything you read online is background for that conversation, not a substitute for it.

Where does concrete block fit?

For the walls, the case for block is practical. A block wall goes up in stages, which suits a build being paid for in stages.

It also fails in ways people can see and fix. A poorly laid block wall shows itself in uneven courses, thin or hungry mortar joints and cores that were supposed to be filled and weren't. That visibility is an advantage on a site you are checking yourself.

The catch is that not all blocks are the same, and the difference is not always obvious on a pallet. If your engineer has specified a block, treat that specification as part of the order rather than as a suggestion, and ask your supplier what they can confirm about what they are quoting. Check the load when it arrives, not after it is laid.

Where does poured concrete fit?

Poured concrete does the work that has to be continuous and reinforced: footings, columns, beams, slabs, and retaining structures where ground is pushing back.

If you're weighing whole poured walls, think about logistics before performance. Pouring a wall means formwork, steel fixing, a pour that has to happen in one go, and access for the truck or the mixer. On a tight site up a narrow road, that is a real constraint before it is an engineering question.

Where concrete is going in, the details that decide the result are the steel, the mix and the curing. Get the reinforcement right and the pour placed properly, and concrete does what it is meant to. Rush any of the three and the failure is buried where you can't inspect it, which is the part that should worry you.

We covered cement choice separately in cement brands in Jamaica compared, and slab planning in our Kingston concrete slab guide.

Where does clay brick fit?

Mostly on the face of the building rather than inside the structure. Brick shows up on a feature wall, a boundary wall, a planter, a pillar or a facing panel, and it earns its place on how it looks.

If you want brick on your house, the questions to ask are what backs it, how it is tied to the structure behind, and how water is stopped from sitting where you can't see it.

Ask those questions before the brick arrives, not after. A brick face that was never detailed properly is an expensive thing to take down.

What decides whether the wall is any good?

Workmanship, and it isn't close. The same block, the same cement and the same steel produce very different walls depending on who laid them and whether anybody checked.

The things worth checking as the work goes up are mortar joints that are consistent rather than starved, cores filled where the drawings say filled, steel that is the specified size and at the specified spacing with proper laps, and concrete kept damp while it cures instead of left to dry out in the sun.

None of that is glamorous and none of it costs much at the time. All of it is expensive to correct once the render is on. The habit worth keeping is walking the site before each stage closes up the one before it.

What should I sort out before I order?

Start from your engineer's material list rather than from a shopping list you wrote yourself. Put the block size and quantity, the cement, the sand and aggregate, and the steel size and spacing on separate lines. Leave a blank beside anything still waiting on an answer, and don't let the blank get filled in at the counter.

Then sort out the site before the load arrives. Where will the blocks be stacked? Where can a truck actually reach? Who is receiving the delivery and checking it against the list?

Malcolm's stocks cement, steel, lumber and board, and has a garden and building department. Delivery across Kingston and St. Andrew covers cement, blocks, lumber and bulk orders, quoted by order size and location and arranged by calling ahead. Free loading help on bulk orders and building materials is offered as well. Ask about both separately when you call, along with your part of Kingston or St. Andrew. A category list tells you where to begin and not what is on the shelf this morning, so ask about your specific items.

If you are still working out sequencing, our guide to how long a Kingston construction project takes is a reasonable place to plan the order of the stages.

Frequently Asked Questions