Lecture 4:

Brick & Masonry

Construction

Building Construction and Technology 2

History
Masonry began spontaneously in the
creation of low walls by stacking stones or
pieces of caked mud taken from dried
puddles.
Mortar was originally the mud smeared
into the joints of the rising wall to lend
stability and weathertightness.
Stone -> Brick

Monadnock Building, Chicago

Mortar
Mortar is as vital a part of masonry as the masonry units
themselves.
Mortar serves to cushion the masonry units, giving them
full bearing against one another despite their surface
irregularities.
Mortar seals between the units to keep water and wind
from penetrating;
It adheres the units to one another to bond them into a
monolithic structural unit;

Mortar
The most characteristic type of mortar is
made of Portland Cement, hydrated lime,
an inert aggregate (sand), and water.
A mortar made only with portland cement
is harsh, meaning that it does not flow
well on the trowel or under the brick, so
lime is added to impart smoothness and
workability.

Mortar
Prepackaged masonry cements are also widely
used for making mortar.
Most are proprietary formulations that contain
admixtures intended to make the mortar
workable without adding lime.
Two colour of masonry cement are commonly
available:
Light, which cures to about the same light-gray colour as
ordinary concrete blocks,
Dark, cures to dark gray.
Other colours are easily produced by the mason, either by
adding pigments to the mortar and the time of mixing.

Bricks
Among the masonry materials, brick is special in two
respects: Fire resistance and size.
A traditional brick is shaped and dimensioned to fit the
human hand.
Hand-sized bricks are less likely to crack during drying or
firing than larger bricks, and they are easy for the mason
to manipulate.
This small unit size makes brick work very flexible in
adapting to small-scale geometries and patterns and
gives a pleasing scale and texture to a brick wall or wall.

Bricks
There are three major methods used today
for forming bricks: the soft mud process,
the dry-press process, and the stiff mud
process.
The oldest is the soft mud process, in
which a relatively moist clay (20-30
percent water) is pressed into simple
rectangular molds, either by hand or with
the aid or molding machines.

Bricks
The dry-press process is used for clays that
shrink excessively during drying. Clay mixed
with a minimum of water (up to 10 percent) is
pressed into steel molds by a machine working
at a very high pressure.
The high-production stiff mud process is the one
most widely used today, Clay containing 12 to
15 percent water is passed through a vacuum to
remove any pockets of air, the extruded through
a rectangular die.

Bricks
After molding by any of these three
processes, the bricks are dried for one or
two days in a low temperature dryer kiln.
They are then ready for transformation into
their final form by a process known as
firing or burning.

A column of clay emerges from the die in the stiff mud process of molding bricks.

Rotating groups of parallel wires cut the column of clay into individual bricks, ready
for drying and firing.

Brick Sizes
For most bricks in the traditional range of
sizes, three courses of bricks plus the
accompanying three mortar joints add up
to a height of 8 inches (203mm).
Length dimensions must be calculated
specifically for the brick selected and must
include the thicknesses of the mortar
joints.

Bricks

Bricks may be solid, cored, hollow, or frogged. By

reducing the volume and thickness of the clay, cores
and frogs permit more even drying and firing of bricks,
reduce fuel costs for firing, reduce shipping costs and
create bricks that are lighter and easier to handle.

Hollow bricks, which may contain up to 60 percent

voids, are used primarily to enable the insertion and
grouting of steel reinforcing bars in single wythes of
brickwork.

Custom shapes and sizes of brick are often required for

buildings with special details, ornamentation, or unusual
geometries.

Brickwork
Three important qualities that designer
must consider in choosing the brick:
Molding process,
Color
Size

Brickwork
Grades for Building and Facing Bricks
Grade SW

Severe weathering

Grade MW

Moderate weathering

Grade NW

Negligible weathering

Types of Facing Bricks

Type FBX

High degree of mechanical perfection, narrow

color range, minimum size variation per unit

Type FBS

Wide range of color and greater size variation

per unit

Type FBA

Non-uniformity in size, colour, and texture per

unit

Brickwork
Grade SW is recommended for use in contact with the
ground, or in situations where the brickwork is likely to
be saturated with water.
Grade MW may be used above ground.
Grade SW will provide greater durability.

Grade NW is intended for use in sheltered or indoor

locations.

Laying Bricks
Bricks are laid in the various positions for visual reasons,
structural reasons, or both.
The simplest brick wall is a single wythe of stretchers.
For walls two or more wythes thick, headers are used to
bond the wythes together into a structural unit.
Rowlock courses are often used for caps on garden
walls and for sloping sills under windows.
Soldier courses for visual emphasis in such locations as
window lintels or tops of walls.

Bonding
The problem of bonding multiple wythes of
brick has been solved in many ways in
different regions of the world.
Often resulting in surface patterns that are
particularly pleasing to the eye.

Running bond
Consists entirely of stretchers

Common Bond or American Bond

Has a header course every sixth course.

English Bond alternates courses

of headers and stretchers

Flemish Bond alternates headers and

stretchers in each course

Constructing a brickwall
A Bricklayer rule or a story pole that is
marked with the course heights is used to
establish accurate course heights in the
leads.
The work is checked frequently with a
spirit level to assure that surfaces are flat
and plumb and courses are level.

Constructing a brickwall

Constructing a brickwall

Constructing a brickwall

Constructing a brickwall
Bricks may be cut as needed either with
sharp, well-directed blows of the chiselpointed end of a masons hammer or, for
greater accuracy and more utilizes a watercooled diamond blade.
Cutting of bricks slows the process of
bricklaying considerably, however, ordinary
brick walls should be dimensioned to
minimize cutting.

Mortar Joints
Mortar joints can vary in thickness from about inch
(6.5mm) to more than inch (13mm).
Thin joints work only when the brick are identical to one
another within very small tolerances and the mortar is
made with a fine sand.
Very thick joints require a stiff mortar that is difficult to
work with.

Mortar joints are usually standardized at 3/8 inch

(9.5mm), which is easy for the mason and allows for
considerable distortion and unevenness in the bricks.

Joints
The joints in brickwork are tooled an hour
or two after laying as the mortar begins to
harden, to give a neat appearance and to
compact the mortar into a profile that
meets the visual and weather-resistive
requirements of the wall.

Joints

Joints
After joint tooling, the face of the brick wall
is swept with a soft brush to remove the
dry crumbs of mortar left by the tooling
process.
Most brick walls are later given a final
cleaning by scrubbing with muriatic acid
(HCI) and rinsing with water to remove
mortar stains from the faces of the bricks.

Spanning Openings
Wood was used for lintel in the past time,
but no longer used because of its
tendency to burn, to decay, and to shrick
and allow the masonry above to settle and
crack.
Lintels of reinforced concrete, reinforced
brick, or steel angles are all equally
satisfactory from a technical standpoint.

Double angle steel lintel

Reinforced brick lintel

Precast reinforced concrete lintel

Corbel
The corbel is an ancient structural
device of limited spanning
capability one that may be used for
small openings in brick walls, for
beam brackets and for ornament.
A good rule of thumb for designing
corbels is that the projection of
each course should not exceed
half the course height

Arch
Gauged brick arch and rough arch.

In an arch of gauged brick, each brick is

rubbed to the required wedge shape on an
abrasive stone, which is laborious and
expensive.
The rough arch, which depends on wedgeshaped mortar joints for its curvature, is
much more usual in todays building.

Baeerl Vault
Barrel vault and Dome
An arch translated along a line
perpendicular to its plane produces a
barrel vault.
An arch rotated about its vertical centerline
becomes a dome.