Building Materials and Construction Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Part 5 of the National Building Code of India 2016 deals with building materials. The parts of the code are numbered: Part 1 Definitions, Part 2 Administration, Part 3 Development control rules and general building requirements, Part 4 Fire and life safety, Part 5 Building materials, and so on. Fire and life safety is Part 4, administration is Part 2, and landscaping belongs to a later part, so these options do not match.

Answer: A

IS 1121 (Part 1): 2013 is the part of the Indian Standard on methods of test for determination of strength properties of natural building stones that covers the compressive strength. The other parts of IS 1121 cover other strength properties: Part 2 the transverse strength, Part 3 the tensile strength and Part 4 the shear strength. So only Part 1 is the code for compressive strength.

Answer: D

Victoria stone is made of granite pieces whose surfaces are hardened by immersion in a solution of soda silicate (sodium silicate) for about two months. Ransom stone is an artificial stone made by sand and a solution of sodium silicate, Imperial stone is made of granite chips and cement, and bituminous stone is a stone mixed with bitumen. So the description in the stem fits Victoria stone as marked in the key.

Answer: B

The stages in making fire bricks are unsoiling (removing the top soil), digging the clay, weathering it in heaps for some months, blending the clay with other materials and finally tempering it with water to the right consistency before moulding. The sequence Unsoiling, Digging, Weathering, Blending, Tempering is therefore the right one. The others put tempering or digging before weathering, or blending after the clay has been tempered, which reverses the order of the process.

Answer: D

Bullnose bricks are made with a rounded edge or corner, and they are used to form a rounded quoin, the external corner of a wall, which gives a smooth curved arris instead of a sharp edge that could be chipped. They are not made for window joints, which use ordinary or special shaped bricks for the sills and jambs, nor for towers or for furnaces, where fire bricks are used.

Answer: B

Double cant bricks have two splayed (angled) faces, so that they can be laid to turn the line of masonry through an angle. They are therefore used to construct octagonal pillars, whose sides meet at 135 degrees. King closer bricks are cut diagonally to fill the gap near a corner, bullnose bricks have a rounded edge for a quoin, and compass bricks have one curved face for circular walls and not for straight-sided pillars.