Brick wall

“ Or, it may be that your client concludes to build a thoroughly good solid brick wall, but wants to save 3 to 4 per cent on the total cost of the house by using common brick throughout. This will be a good wall, no doubt, but how will it look! Common brick are not made with an eye to external appearance; their great merit lies in solid structural value. Occasionally a well-burned selected common brick, made of a clay that burns to a good color may be found and used, with proper care of bond and mortar joint, for facing purposes ”

“ So far as brick enter into the construction of a house, it requires practically no maintenance. You do not have to patch, repair, or paint a brick wall,—it wears. It is as sound in twenty-five years as the day it was built, and even more attractive. Figure up the paint bill for a frame house in ten years, then add the various little repairs necessitated by the shrinking, cracking, and decaying of wood exposed to the weather, and you have a neat little bill of upkeep, for the frame house, which is exactly nothing for brick. ”

“ In examining the bond in a brick wall, the eye naturally is first attracted to the brick units as so many colored spots arranged in different order so as to produce a certain pattern effect; but this pattern effect in the brickwork depends very largely upon what at first may be overlooked or disregarded, the mortar joint. The mention of mortar suggests in the mind a very commonplace thing which the workman mixes and carries in a hod to the bricklayer; but it is concave one of the most important elements entering into the beauty, as well as the strength, of a brick wall. ”

“ For the most part the brick building of that period was confined to the use of common brick for ordinary construction or for backing stone-faced walls. From that date, however, to the present, a growing taste has demanded and secured artistic effects in the brick wall by the use of specially manufactured face brick which, in a bewildering variety of beautiful color tones and textures, have been sympathetically and artistically treated by our leading architects, as may be seen all over our country. ”

“ The advantage of using brick is, that a smooth channel offering little resistance to the flow of water can be formed with less expense than with stone, and greater security can be obtained against any leakage; for besides the coat of plastering which covers the face of the walls and the top of the concrete, there is also a mortar joint between this plastering and the brick work. The bricks being of good form and easily handled, can be more expeditiously and closely laid than the face of a wall of stone, and afford a smooth and uniform face to the wall with less expense. ”

“ Each wall was constructed very strongly of two brick walls filled between with beaten earth. The lower portion of the wall was much corroded by the wind and sand, but the upper part where it had not collapsed, was in good preservation. There were rows of holes at the bottom on the east side, where there appeared to have been extensive stables with mangers for horses. The lower portion of the wall was of kiln-baked bricks, and the upper part in horizontal layers of baked bricks every four feet and mud bricks between. ”

“ Where local requirements demand a 12-inch wall, the method of construction is the same as in the 8-inch wall, except that two rows or tiers of backing brick, instead of one, are carried up to the advanced level of the face brick, leaving the thin spaces between the tiers of brick open as the best way of securing a warmer and drier wall. Of course, in the case of piers and points in the wall that carry heavy loads, all interior joints should be well slushed with mortar for evident structural reasons. ”

“ If the earthen wall stands firm, only one form, fitting inside the brick wall, is needed. Make this form of narrow flooring securely fastened on the inside to wagon tires or to curved wooden templates, and long enough to extend 2 feet below the point to which the brick are to be removed and 4 inches above the ground level. If the earthen wall shows signs of crumbling, before taking out the brick, dig back the ground to the necessary depth and use an outside form. Lower the forms into place and fill them with 1: 2: 4 concrete. ”

“ If the bricks were turned so as to show their short sides or ends in front instead of their long ones, certainly a compact wall of a whole brick thick, instead of half a brick, would be produced, and while the thickness of the wall would be double, the longitudinal bond would be shortened by one-half: a wall of any great thickness built in this manner would necessarily be composed of so many independent one-brick walls. To produce a transverse and yet preserve a true longitudinal bond, the bricks are laid in a definite arrangement of stretchers and headers. ”

“ When made of good clay, rightly tempered with sand, and well burned, they will in a wall remain for centuries, and as far as material is concerned, answer all purposes. Brick walls may be thinner than stone walls, but they equally require "firring off" for inside plastering, and in addition, they need the aid of paint quite as often as wood, to give them an agreeable color—bricks themselves not usually being in the category of desirable colors or shades. ”

“ Brick veneering is not unusual in sections of the country where brick is very expensive and the effect of a brick house desired. It is a four-inch brick wall anchored to a frame structure. The anchoring is sometimes accomplished by driving twenty-penny nails into wood-work in a way to project into joints. ”

“ These if shallow, should be filled with plaster, containing a large amount of fibre, before the regular plastering is started; if deep, as when the 8-inch wide tile is used for backing, a stretcher course of common brick or brick-size hollow tile fills the space.
The chimney construction does not differ in any essential from that used for the solid brick wall, but we strongly urge the use of brick for the chimney, rather than tile or concrete blocks, as affording more reliable protection for the flue. ”

“ But I like talking to a brick wall - it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me! ”

“ Nearly all houses are built of bricks, as they are less expensive than stone, and more durable than wood, besides being less liable to be burnt. Walls of brick may be formed of any required thickness, and as the length of a brick is twice its breadth, they admit of being so laid that the wall shall not part in pieces, which would be the case if laid as in fig. 1, as the seams of mortar run continuously through the wall, which in bricklaying is always avoided, by different methods. ”

“ Like most stones of a similar kind it stands on the back of a clumsily worked stone-tortoise, but nothing is left of a protecting shed, and nothing indicates, as some authors most likely wrongly, assert, that the stone and its neighbors, which do not even stand in a straight line, have ever been built into a brick wall. An old picture of the stone shows it encased in a kind of brick niche, and it is by no means impossible that this has given rise to the wrongful idea concerning a brick wall. ”

“ Anchors are used to tie the building together, and these are to be placed near the lower edge of the joists so that they may split out of the joists easily or allow the floor to drop free, in case of a falling of the floor and joists.
A popular type of construction is that known as brick veneer, Fig. 148. It consists of an ordinary framed house with a covering of brick as shown. These bricks are fastened to the wall by -139- metallic bonds. From the outside, the building has all of the appearance of solid brick, while it is claimed that a wall so formed is warmer than one of solid brick. ”

“ This thirstiness of bricks is their greatest fault. Three or four days of driving rain will sometimes wet through a brick wall two feet thick, crumbling the plaster and spoiling the wallpaper. That is why it is a poor plan to plaster directly on the brick wall of a house. ”

“ Bricks are cut as necessary to fit within the wooden framework. The photograph suggests a question which visitors ask:—what holds the brick panels in place and prevents them from falling out? The explanation is simple and shows the cleverness of the designers. The brick panels fit into frames that have been slightly hollowed out on their inner sides. Through the window one has a glimpse of an inside wall. It has exposed timber construction too. ”

“ The Lombard Street excavations of 1785 exposed “a wall which consisted of the smaller-sized Roman bricks, in which were two perpendicular flues, one semicircular and the other rectangular; the height of the wall was 10 ft. and the depth to the top from the surface was also 10 ft.” Here we have evidence of a brick wall rising the full height of one story at least (Archæol. viii.) . Roach Smith noticed a wall in Scott’s Yard “8 ft. thick, entirely composed of oblong tiles in mortar.” Mr. Lambert has recently described some walls of brick 31⁄4 ft. ”

“ A variation of solid brick construction is the so-called hollow or vaulted wall in which the face and common brick are separated by a two-inch air space and bonded together by metal ties laid in the mortar joints at proper intervals. ”

“ In view of its very nature and the great variety of its proper uses, it should never displace the exterior masonry wall, which in stone, tile, or brick makes the most secure and enduring structure. If the 80 per cent of building in this country, now done of frame, were put into brick, or other durable and fire-resistive materials, it would result in a great economic national gain, people would have better and more substantial houses, and the lumber which everybody needs would be conserved for the legitimate uses to which it is admirably adapted. ”

“ Cleanliness, looks, beauty, have a very real value in dollars and cents. The same principle applies to a face brick finish of the wall surface. Face brick are made with more care, are handled and shipped with more care, and laid with more care, just for the purpose of producing a more attractive wall. When you use face brick for your clients, you give them the last word in wall construction, which is at once, as no other material, strong, enduring, comfortable, fire-safe, economical, and beautiful. ”

“ The joists for the floor above may be used for this planking and then lifted into place when the wall is ready to receive them, thus effecting a saving in labor. Care should be taken to keep the horses several inches away from the inside face of the wall, lest the jarring caused by bricks and mortar being deposited on the scaffold may push the green wall out of plumb. The scaffolding for the foundation wall may be dispensed with, if it is found more convenient to lay the upper portion of the wall from the outside. ”

“ Wooden brick should be provided and built in where it is necessary to attach wood work to brick work. Usually this is about two feet six inches apart in a vertical or horizontal direction. The wooden brick should be the thickness of the brick itself and the mortar joints; that is, there should be no mortar above or below a wooden brick. Iron ventilators should be provided; one in each outside wall under each room where cellar windows are not provided. Windows are not usually provided where there is no cellar. ”

“ The brick is neither soft nor sticky, and it has not the smooth surface of a piece of clay, but is full of little holes or pores, which look as if they were formed in letting the steam out. A brick lets air through; some air gets into our houses through the bricks even when the windows are shut. Water will get through bricks more easily than it does through clay. After heavy rain you {17} can often find that water has soaked through a brick wall and made the wall paper quite damp. A pretty experiment can be made with the piece of apparatus shown in Fig. ”

“ Whatever type of construction is chosen, solid brick, hollow tile, or veneer, it should rest upon a solid brick foundation. In the majority of cases, where soil conditions are favorable, the brick foundation walls of moderate sized houses do not need a footing except at points bearing concentrated loads. Naturally, the excavation should be carried down to good solid earth, free from loose, spongy soil or filled-in ground which might later permit sufficient unequal settlement to result in serious cracks throughout the wall of the house. ”

“ A level course of long stone, running through a wall of small stones or brick, gives greater strength by binding the whole together. This has not always a good excuse for extending beyond the wall-face. But a projecting belt of brick adds nothing either in appearance or in reality. If horizontal lines are required to diminish the apparent height of the building or affect its proportions, make them of brick of different color from those of the main wall or laid in different position. Remember this; fanciful brick decorations are quite sure to look better on paper than when executed. ”

“ The jambs of the doors and windows and the tracery of the latter, as well as the machicolations and the coping of the parapet, are all of stone; so too are the chimney-pieces. But the walls are of brick, and, as already mentioned, so is the vaulting of the passages; the whole work being a curious mixture of wrought stone and brick. The brick staircase has stone steps and a stone handrail built into the wall (Figs. 43, 44) . ”