Council Rock School District Home Builders Maintain Tradition of Quality

The Council Rock School District which serves the area of Bucks County has been serving residents there since the early 1700's. People have come from many parts of Europe to seek education for their children in a free country. Seeing some of the homes that have been preserved in history, we see the conditions that people were living in and the requests that they may have made to their Council Rock School District home builders. The homes that were built from the earliest years of the community until the late 1800's were meant to meet the needs of very large families.

Often times, even extended family members would live with their relatives. In those years long past, it was customary for one family to stay in the same house for several generations. When things began to change with the Civil War and other such disruptions, the manner of building homes also started to change. Back before the war between the states, many of the homes were made of brick. We see many examples of homes from the time period still standing even today, because of their outstanding strength. As one could imagine, the manner of building these homes was very long and physically taxing. In order to ensure the security of the walls, each layer of brick could not be built upon unless the lower layer was already dry.

This presented a large challenge to the Council Rock School District home builders of the time, because Pennsylvania is known for having very humid weather all year round. In a dry climate, cement and mortar would take two to three days to completely dry, whereas in a more wet climate like in Pennsylvania, the cement could take up to a week to fully dry. Considering the number of levels of bricks that would have to be built up, in many cases, the home for a large family would take well over a year to complete. Of course, during this time, the Council Rock School District home builders learned very important home-building skills.

One of the skills that the home builders acquired was in the rotation system of brick laying. In an effort to build the foundation as solid as they could make it, they would use a small amount of cement so that the top layers would not lean to one side. The smaller cement levels also enabled the Council Rock School District home builders to work faster because the cement would be drying faster. To ensure that the walls met together well, rather than building one wall at a time, the builders would lay one layer of bricks all around the perimeter of the house.

This way, they could continue the process of brick laying as soon as the first bricks were dried and set in place. This also worked to interlock the corners where the walls met, leaving no chance for a wall to collapse on its own. Each wall would be held up by all of the others. The durability of the work from Council Rock School District home builders has a long history of quality. Even though trends have been taking home construction to every extreme known to man, these home builders have remained true to the construction methods taught to them by their relatives that came before. The trade of home building was passed down from generation to generation, keeping the tradition of quality alive. As we observe the building trends around other places of the country, we can tell which methods are more successful and which were not very effective. No matter which building trend comes our way, the tradition of quality is the one that people choose.