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

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have plenty of space but you're tight on money, it's an ingenious solution.

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.

Pre industrialism, almost everyone was dirt poor by current standards.

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

#82
post #47

Corrugated cardboard just is a wavy wall, sandwiched in between two straight walls. You can also observe corrugated steel and its use in construction, shipping containers, etc. Because these are steel and stronger than paper, the sandwich layers are not needed

You can also peel the label of a tin (can) of baked beans in your cupboard to see the the ripples added for rigidity.

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

#84
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it's a way to brag about how much space you have.

Yeah. Like how Lawns were a way to brag about how much land you have. "Look, I have so much land I can just grow grass instead of crops, you plebs".

And the lawns of today’s middle class are of course still about signaling, it being very humsn for people to try to raise themselves up by adopting and imitating the lifestyle and customs of the class above them. "Look, I have enough leisure time to spend on an entirely superfluous activity!" or "Look, I’m wealthy enough to pay somebody to engage in an entirely superfluous activity!"

Particularly in arid climates it’s also "look how much I can afford to waste perfectly good drinking water!"

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

#85
post #79

Not sure about the actual function that defines the wave, but let’s assume they are convex and concave semi circles. Then to make a wall of length L with bricks of l length, we need pi L/l number of bricks. The linked Reddit post says a straight wall needs to be 2 bricks wide to have the same length, which needs 2 L/l number of bricks which is fewer than the wavy walls

Semicircles seem excessive. At no point does the wall have an angle over 45 degrees, so a semi-circle which would be at a 90 degree angle for every inflection point seems way too wavy.

A sine wave is probably closer, which would give an arc length of sqrt(1+cos(2pix/L)^2). This has no reasonable closed form I can find but it seems like it would be about 21% longer than a straight line.

Edit: Also a semicircle is pi/2 times as long as its diameter, not pi times.

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

#86
Of course title is a bit of a clickbait, because they are comparing walls of same strength, not single row straight walls with curved walls.

But how does this compare with a straight wall with brick columns every two meters or so? My guess this is the best compromise, and maybe that is the best compromise, as it uses about the same number of bricks as a curves wall, but the area wasted is much smaller.

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is if you're selling sheep milk and you don't want to lose your flock.

I think that’s typically a job for fences, right? This sort of wall is, I think, just an aesthetic way of marking a property line/get some privacy.

Drive through rural northern England and you will see vast numbers of sheep moving through pastures that are bordered by old dry-stone walls. The roads will even have equestrian gates alongside them when they have stock grids to prevent the sheep from using the road.

It's all about adapting to local materials. The same technique was used by early settlers in New England (think about the ending of The Shawshank Redemption) because they had to get the stones out of the ground in order to plow and harvest - rather than just make a pile, they used the stones to build walls separating fields.

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

#88

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!

The extra space doesn't have to be fully wasted. You could plant bushes or small trees in the concave sections.

It depends how you define "wasted". If it were a flat wall, it'd give the interior more space by just pushing it out to the furthest point in the wavy wall. I guess you could say that whatever the magnitude of the wall is would be wasted.

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

#89

I see this a lot in the rural US with wooden fences but had no idea why it was done, but I guess its for the same reason (stability). Apparently they've done it since the 1600s. https://www.louispage.com/blog/bid/11160/worm-fence-what-is-... Still, this seemed totally unecessary until I realized this mean they dont have to put any posts into the ground. No digging holes, which would be really nice when you're trying…

it's not for stability, it's because it doesn't require posts so it's cheap and quick

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

#90
post #79

Not sure about the actual function that defines the wave, but let’s assume they are convex and concave semi circles. Then to make a wall of length L with bricks of l length, we need pi L/l number of bricks. The linked Reddit post says a straight wall needs to be 2 bricks wide to have the same length, which needs 2 L/l number of bricks which is fewer than the wavy walls

Article links to this post with another derivation.

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

I'd like to know if this wavy wall technique requires non-square bricks to be stronger. And is it stronger against sideways forces along the concave and convex sections. If it's only the same strength as a straight wall then I'd think it'd be worse as a retaining wall?

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