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.
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)
#82Corrugated 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
Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)
#83Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)
#84Earlier 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".
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)
#85Not 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
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)
#86But 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)
#87Earlier 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.
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)
#88This 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.
Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)
#89I 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…
Re: Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)
#90Not 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
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?