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Crinkle Crankle Wall

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Re: Crinkle Crankle Wall

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're likely right, it's probably not very economical nowadays. Especially given the wider range of materials than be used to build a wall or fence.

Aestethics still apply though and it looks nice. Pet peeve: Why isn't anyone building brick houses anymore?

I suspect because cinder block or ICF is just so much more economical and you can make it look like anything you want (brick will always be brick). Plenty of wood framed but that’s purely cost.

Re: Crinkle Crankle Wall

#22
post #14

While this type of wall mainly exists in England and the Netherlands, it is amusing how the English Wikipedia's main arguments are about saving bricks and possible military advantages, while the Dutch Wikipedia tell these walls are meant to protect fruit from weather conditions. The fruit would typically be planted at the south side. One of the ideas is that the bricks both protect against wind and keep giving some w…

You should update the English Wikipedia with that!

Re: Crinkle Crankle Wall

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aestethics still apply though and it looks nice. Pet peeve: Why isn't anyone building brick houses anymore?

I actually know the answer to this, as I used to live with an architect. This information may apply more specifically to Canada than other places. 1. It's not very good at insulating relative to other materials. 2. It's more labor intensive than other materials.

I have always suspect brick is superior for sound insulation, perhaps not weather though?

Re: Crinkle Crankle Wall

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're likely right, it's probably not very economical nowadays. Especially given the wider range of materials than be used to build a wall or fence.

Aestethics still apply though and it looks nice. Pet peeve: Why isn't anyone building brick houses anymore?

In Central Europe, houses are still commonly built from brick at a structural level. (This includes multi-storey apartment blocks, commonly with some sections implemented as cantilevered reinforced concrete - the block I live in is such an example.) It's rare to encounter a building here where bricks also form the facade however.

Which aspect does your question relate to? The rest of your post is about aesthetics, so if a brick facade is what you're after, they are still very common in the UK, although much of that is old housing stock.

My parents built their house with a brick facade in the 1980s with then-state-of-the-art insulation. (in Central Europe) There is a layer of (large) structural bricks (similar to [1]), followed by various elements of insulation, followed by smaller face bricks to form the visible exterior. (something like [2]) I suspect this was and is somewhat more expensive than simply plastering over the outermost insulation layer. The double shell makes re-insulating with more modern materials prohibitively impractical. (Although the thermal properties of the house in question have held up pretty well.)

On old houses, any visible bricks would have been structural, with effectively no insulation. So I'd imagine that's why it's no longer common.

[1] https://www.wienerberger.at/bauen-mit-ziegeln/wandloesungen/...

[2] https://www.corobrik.co.za/assets/products/facebrick/58/1600...

Re: Crinkle Crankle Wall

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aestethics still apply though and it looks nice. Pet peeve: Why isn't anyone building brick houses anymore?

I actually know the answer to this, as I used to live with an architect. This information may apply more specifically to Canada than other places. 1. It's not very good at insulating relative to other materials. 2. It's more labor intensive than other materials.

[deleted]

Re: Crinkle Crankle Wall

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're likely right, it's probably not very economical nowadays. Especially given the wider range of materials than be used to build a wall or fence.

Aestethics still apply though and it looks nice. Pet peeve: Why isn't anyone building brick houses anymore?

They are in the UK. It is very common to have a decorative weatherproof facade of brick, with a cavity (often filled with insulation) between the bricks and an inside skin of insulating block, or more often now, a prefab timber frame.

Re: Crinkle Crankle Wall

#30

I believe the oldest exterior wall of the St. Louis Zoo (on the north side, along where the 1904 World's Fair bird cage was relocated) was modeled after this style. I think it's more than one brick thick, though, so it probably wasn't done that way to save on brick, just to echo the style.

That was my first thought too. You can see it on google maps here: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6369944,-90.2886515,3a,75y,2...
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