The Blog

Posted on 12 Apr 2012 by tgbuilders and has 0 Comment




Brickwork Information

Date: 12 Apr 2012
0 Comment
Building design,building material,Construction
Posted by: tgbuilders
 This article is written to inform people who are new to the field of brick working as well as for anyone who are having their property constructed and/ or repaired using the techniques outlined in this article.
Before we get into the main content of brick working, we must first define two key words which apply to bricks, these being:

Stretcher = brick in lengthwise
Header = brick in widthwise

Fig.1 shows what the stretcher and header of the brick are:

 

Stretcher bond: also known as running bond consists of a pattern of bricks laid with only their their stretchers showing. It is a simple repeating pattern design but has the limitation of not being able to make bonds with other bricks perpendicular to it (i.e. you can’t form a corner by joining two of these stretcher bond brick walls together since the design doesn’t incorporate a header into the pattern). For this reason, it is suitable only for making stand alone thin brick walls with some additional reinforcement. It is common so see stretcher bond brick walls in modern buildings forming the outer face of a cavity wall or as the exterior shell for structures built using timber or steel-frames.

Fig.2: Stretcher bond
English Bond: A bond of alternate courses of stretchers and headers.
This bond has two alternating courses of stretchers and headers, with the headers centered on the stretchers and each alternate row vertically aligned. There is a variant in which the second course of stretchers is half offset from the first, giving rise to English cross bond/ Dutch bond.
Fig.3: English bond
 Dutch/ Flemish Bond: A bond of alternate headers and stretchers like the English bond although in this case, for each brick row, the pattern consists of header followed by stretcher followed by header and so on. This is repeated in the upper and lower columns (see Fig.4 for a visual explanation of the Flemish bond). The result of this alternate, interlocking pattern is a decorative bond, where two separate walls of Flemish bonding can be joined at a perpenicular angle to form a corner of a wall. However, it is quite difficult to lay Flemish bond properly because care must be taken that when all the perpendicular walls are joined to form corners using  vertical mortar joints, that the walls need to be vertically aligned.

Fig.4: Flemish bond

A common variation often found in early 18th-century buildings is Glazed-headed Flemish Bond in which the exposed headers are burned until they vitrify (form a glass like substance) with a black glassy surface.

Other variants are Monk bond and Wessex Bond (the Wessex bond has a brick pattern consisting of three stretchers between each header). This type of bond is much more easier to lay down than when making a full Flemish Bond brick wall.

Monk bond is a variant of Flemish bond with a pattern consisting of two stretchers followed by a headers followed by two strecthcers and so on in each row with the headers placed at the position in between two stretchers in the row below.

Fig.5: Monk bond
 
Soldier Bond: Not really a bond, but this type of decoration is commonly used for decorative purposes, note also that because of the primary layer of bricks placed upright, it is not able to withstand very heavy loads placed on the wall
Fig.6: Soldier bond




About the author

tgbuilders