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GLOSSARY
Not everyone understands all the terminology that builders & trades use. This list should help you understand the terminology your builder & trades use on a day by day basis.
| Architrave: | Or lining Trim which is planted to cover the joint between the frame of a door or window and the wall. |
| Balustrade: | The edge railing of a balcony, stairs etc. from the handrail down to floor level. |
| Batten: | A piece of square-sawn softwood timber used as fixings for slates or tiles. Typically used to support roof sheets or tiles. |
| Bay Window: | A window that projects from the wall beyond its general line. |
| Birdsmouth Joint: | A cut into the end of a timber to fit it over a cross timber, particularly the cut in a rafter to fit it over a wall plate. |
| Building Surveyor: | A specialist in building construction and repairs and alterations to buildings. He supervises building, decorating, and sanitary work, advises in disputes on party walls, easements, light and other legal matters. |
| Cladding: | The non-loadbearing clothing of the walls and roof of a building, the skin used to keep the weather out. |
| Cleat: | A small piece of wood reinforcing another or used to locate positively another timber or plugged to a wall to carry a shelf. |
| Contract: | An agreement between a client and a building or civil engineering contractor to do certain definite types of work at certain rates. |
| Cornice: | (1)
A moulding at the top of an outside wall which overhangs it and throws
the drips away from the wall. 2) A moulding at a junvtion between an inside wall and the ceiling. |
| Eaves: | The lowest overhanging part of a sloped roof. |
| Flashing: | A strip of impervious material usually flexible metal which excludes water from the junction between a roof covering and another surface. |
| Gable: | The triangular part of the end wall of a building with a sloping roof. A gable may be of any material - weatherboards, brick, stone, hung tiles, etc. |
| Glazier: | A tradesman who cuts glass and fixes it in a window or door frame. |
| Joiner: | A man/woman who makes joinery and works mainly at the bench on wood which has been cut and shaped by the machinists. His work is finer than the carpenter's, much of it being highly finished and done in the good conditions of the jointery shop where it is not exposed to the weather. |
| Joist: | A joist is a wood or steel beam directly supporting a floor or ceiling. |
| Moulding: | A continuous projection or groove used as decoration to throw shadow, sometimes also to throw water away from a wall. It may be in stone, brick, plaster, joinery, cast iron, aluminium, plastics, and so on. |
| Nogging: | A nogging is horizontal short timbers which strengthen the studs or a framed partition. |
| Purlin: | A horizontal beam in a roof, at right angles to the principal rafters or trusses, and carried on them. It carries the common rafters if there are any, or the corrugated sheet. |
| Rafter: | A sloping timber extending from the eave to the ridge of a roof. |
| Stud: | A wood or steel vertical structural member of a wall. |
| Truss: | A frame to carry a roof or other load, built up wholly from members in tension and compression. |