31–40 of 43 posts
I notice they don't mention what the binder is, and I see it labeled as a "secret binder" in another article.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brick exteriors do not burn. Brick exteriors are much more rugged to the elements. Brick exteriors do not require maintenance of painting, etc. Brick exterior houses are cheaper to insure. There's lots of reasons for brick exterior than just aesthetics.
I agree with everything you said (particularly the no maintenance part), but I think there must be another explanation as to why brick facades are so prevalent on southern Ontario houses. Other areas with similar climates and population levels (say, Minnesota) have much fewer brick homes. It probably comes down to tradition. In the old parts of any city, all of the 100 year-old houses have brick exteriors, as well as…
Sounds like a more rigorously engineered form of the Compressed Earth Brick. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Compressed_Earth_Blo...
Sounds like a more rigorously engineered form of the Compressed Earth Brick. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Compressed_Earth_Blo...
Many older village houses here in Czech Republic are made from compressed earth bricks (using local materials & not fired). As long as you keep them dry, they will last basically forever. If they get wet, they loose all strength and the building collapses, making any floods particularly dangerous for such buildings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is fairly UK-centric, and in the UK, most suburban homes are made of brick.
"Brick" homes are common in the US too, but most made after WWII are simply veneers over a structure of a different material. Are you sure that's not the case there? I did an image search for "uk home construction", and all of the instances on the first page also appear to be veneers. Example: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/615000-new-...
I work in the masonry trade, all of the materials we use are from brick yards and quarries that are local (~75-100mi radius) for the simple fact that transporting large numbers of pallets of brick over long distances is a logistical nightmare. Storing them can also prove to be a problem, so much so that we literally throw away thousands of bricks we have left over from jobs every year. It’s rare that two customers would use the same bricks and we end up keeping the extras until we know we’re not getting called back in to do additional work.
They’re right that reclaiming bricks as being labor intensive work. The real holy grail of this industry would be figuring out how to reclaim the trillions of bricks already in circulation without needing human intervention. There is often huge demand for antique bricks because a lot of the unique clay deposits used to create the bricks end up being totally depleted. Milwaukee, WI is famous for their Cream City bricks that were produced in the mid and late 19th century but once the unique clay beds used to create these bricks were gone, so were new Cream Cities. You can see these in just about every city’s downtown in Wisconsin. I’ve spent many hours reclaiming these bricks from old houses and factories because for one, they look incredible, and two, they’re worth about a dollar a piece once they’re ready to be laid again (Pretty good money if you’re good with a brick hammer). If there was a way you could dump a house worth of old bricks into one end of a black box and spit out reusable brick from the other end, you’d basically be printing money. Mortar is not easily removed from brick without damaging the brick. That’s kind of the whole point of the mortar being used as a binder in the first place.
What's the binder?
It would be interesting to see exactly how much CO2 was created in the process of creating a brick vs the amount of CO2 created during transportation. This tech seems like a good idea until you realize every brick is being produced in one spot in England... the real problem isn’t creating these bricks, it’s building out the infrastructure to supply a significant demand. I work in the masonry trade, all of the materia…
For anyone interested, Cream City bricks has a Wikipedia page[0] with pictures of buildings built with them.
What's the binder?
I thought it would be cement and they were ashamed to admit that. But their site says "no cement use when compared with concrete blocks". Not sure why "no" has to be a relative term, so something sneaky might be going on there.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10669205B2/en?oq=US10669...
I think this is the patent, but they don't mention a "binder" per se. There are several claims specifically relating to the exclusion of "tar" which seems interesting. I think someone better versed in reading patents than I am might be able to make more sense of that. Tar just doesn't seem like their style. Maybe there are already claims on that or they are well known. But "organic matter", "tar", "cement" or "fly ash" still seem like possibilities.
The patent also mentions "additive" (e.g. pigment / recycled toner) as improving the strength of the resulting bricks and reducing moisture uptake. It can be added in surprising amounts (5-20%). That doesn't seem very scalable though.
Or, of course, they could have come up with something else in the meantime. Distinctly possible.