Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

twistedsifter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 278 posts

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#161

Post by 93po »

wkdneidbwf wrote: post #158
geeky4qwerty wrote: post #26

This feels a bit like diet clickbait... "use fewer bricks than a straight wall"* *A straight wall of the approximal strength and length of a wavy wall, not just length. My counter would be that from a practical perspective the amount of space wasted by the wavy design seems to negate the usefulness of the design. Probably makes the lawn crew dizzy when mowing it too!

this is an overly cynical take. headlines are brief by necessity. nobody would read that and think that a curved line from A to B is shorter than a straight line between the same points. the first paragraph explains it, > these wavy walls actually use less bricks than a straight wall because they can be made just one brick thin, while a straight wall—without buttresses—would easily topple over

I think you overestimate what people would reactively think when reading this headline

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#162

Post by devilbunny »

pfdietz wrote: post #106
devilbunny wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor is pretty much directly proportional to number of bricks placed. If you save on bricks, you save on labor. If that was your point, sorry for misreading you. In the era in which these were commonly used, bricks were largely made on-site or very nearby. So you saved on labor twice - once to make the bricks, and again to place them.

I was thinking of a comment in the John Cook link, where someone was saying these are fiddly to build compared to a conventional brick wall.

They're certainly fiddly to plan out compared to a straight wall (where all you need is a long piece of twine anchored at each end), but I assume that those building them use some kind of forms to help keep the angles correct.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#163

Post by cantSpellSober »

No they don't

> [Wavy walls] use more bricks than a straight wall of the same thickness

However they "resist horizontal forces, like wind, more than straight wall would."

> So if the alternative to a crinkle crankle wall one-brick thick is a straight wall two or more bricks thick, the former saves material

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#164

Post by surfpel »

cantSpellSober wrote: post #163

No they don't > [Wavy walls] use more bricks than a straight wall of the same thickness However they "resist horizontal forces, like wind, more than straight wall would." > So if the alternative to a crinkle crankle wall one-brick thick is a straight wall two or more bricks thick , the former saves material https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...

If a one brick thick straight wall can't stand, then you don't have a wall you have a pile of bricks. It's pointless to consider the impractical case.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#165

Post by cantSpellSober »

surfpel wrote: post #164
cantSpellSober wrote: post #163

No they don't > [Wavy walls] use more bricks than a straight wall of the same thickness However they "resist horizontal forces, like wind, more than straight wall would." > So if the alternative to a crinkle crankle wall one-brick thick is a straight wall two or more bricks thick , the former saves material https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...

If a one brick thick straight wall can't stand, then you don't have a wall you have a pile of bricks. It's pointless to consider the impractical case.

Most will stand unless they need high wind resistance (or are buttressed).

There are many practical cases for a straight wall of bricks, it's not an "impractical case."

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#167

Post by araes »

HWR_14 wrote: post #50
geeky4qwerty wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. I'd say if you're tight on money I'm not sure a wall should be at the top of your to-buy list.

If you own a large amount of land than the savings add up. Especially if you live 250 years ago (or you want to match the walls from then) when bricks were not produced and delivered in massive industrial processes and large estates were more common.

Even in the modern era the cost is still relevant. Bricks are still pretty expensive.

If I have 100 acres (square), I need ~2.5 km of wall, at ~150,000 bricks for a 1m wall single brick-width wall (deter animals, mark property).

At the online prices I'm seeing ($0.65), that's ~$100,000. If I have to make it all double width, suddenly its $200,000. $100,000 delta is still pretty relevant for a modern small scale farmer.

Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)

#168

Post by jerry1979 »

vharuck wrote: post #78

Soda cans also have a counterintuitive efficiency feature: concave bottoms. If a can with a flat bottom held the same amount of soda, it would be shorter and have less surface area, but its metal body would need to be thicker to withstand the same pressure. In the end, it'd require more aluminum. https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Science-Notebook/2015/0414... ^Probably not the best article for this, but it was easy t…

I think the Christian Science Monitor is perfectly fine. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/christian-science-monitor/
Post reply on HN