How to make house bricks: Making Bricks the Old Fashioned Way

Making Bricks the Old Fashioned Way

To make bricks from clay, there are traditionally five steps involved:

1. Obtaining the Clay

Obtaining the Clay

Producing bricks requires good clay. Clay can be found in many areas, but some deposits of clay are better than others. Good clay doesn’t contain a lot of sediment, debris, or limestone. Some clay deposits can be found along rivers, while in other areas clay can be found right below the top soil. Once a good source of clay was found, it was dug out and aged over the winter. When the clay was exposed to winter temperatures, it dried out the clay and made the clay easier to work with. After quite a bit of clay had been dug out from a source, it became a clay “pit.” These clay pits were a dangerous place to work, because the walls would occasionally give way and fall on top of the workers below.

2. Making the “Batter”

Making the Batter 1
Making the Batter 2

The batter for making bricks consists of clay, water, and sand. Successful brickyards had a ready source for each of these ingredients. The exact ratios of each depended on the clay that was used. Some clays contained sand already, therefore they did not require as much to make bricks. The three ingredients were combined and mixed together into “mud.” How the ingredients were mixed has changed a lot over the years. Initially, the clay, water, and sand were thrown into a shallow circular pit. A pole with a wheel was anchored to a pivot in the middle of the pit, while the other end was attached to a horse. As the horse walked in a circle around the edge of the pit, the wheel would mix the batter into the correct consistency for a good “mud.”

3. Shaping the “Mud” into Bricks

Shaping the Raw Bricks

When the three ingredients mentioned in step 2 were combined and well-mixed, they were in a putty form. This meant they could easily be shaped into bricks. The standard brick was 4 x 8 x 2 ¼ inches in size. Not all bricks conformed to this size, but most were close. Balls, or lumps of clay, were “dusted” with sand (to prevent them from sticking to the wooden molds) and pushed into sanded rectangular forms (brick molds). Any excess clay could easily be removed at this point. Some brick molds were made to form 1 brick, 2 bricks, 4 bricks, 6 bricks, or 8 bricks.

4. Drying the Raw Bricks

Drying the Raw Bricks

After a brick is formed, it still contains a lot of water. Therefore, the raw bricks had to be laid out to dry. However, laying them out to dry was a tricky process, because raw bricks can easily be disfigured, making them useless. The trick was to limit the amount of handling, or exposure to any potential damage. The raw bricks were laid out on the ground to dry in the sun, or they could be laid out on shelves in covered racks. Generally, the bricks had to be dried for several days, until most of the water had evaporated out of them. The bricks also had to be turned over, so the bottoms would also dry. During this drying period, the raw bricks had to be kept above freezing and dry. If they were rained on or frozen, they could not be used. Therefore, most people quickly got away from laying them out to dry in the sun.

5. Firing the Bricks

Firing the Bricks

The final step in the brick making process was “cooking” the bricks in a kiln. The bricks had to be cooked to a high enough temperature to be “cured.” Thousands of dry, raw bricks were stacked over a fire, and walls were built on all sides of the fire, to contain the high heat. The fires were kept burning for several days, until the bricks reached a very high temperature. Once this occurred, the fire was allowed to burn out, and the bricks could be removed for sale. This burning method was far from perfect, because the temperature inside the walls was not uniform. Bricks that were stacked closest to the fire were often scorched, while those stacked farther away were not. Too much heat could warp or crack a brick. Not enough heat could result in a brick having to be fired again. Heat variations could also change the natural color of a brick. The color of a raw brick is usually different than the color of a fired brick.

How to make mud bricks, and why you might want to

The Mosque of Djenné in Mali is among the largest buildings made entirely of mud. Photo courtesy of Baron Reznik/Aisle Seat Please

Mud is among the most popular building materials in many countries where Heifer works. It makes sense. Mud is plentiful and literally dirt cheap, and so is the sunshine used to dry mud bricks until they’re solid enough for construction. The only costs are in labor and time. It’s a relatively straightforward process that’s been employed with many variations since around 7000 B.C.

But let’s not relegate mud walls to rustic single-room houses with thatched roofs. In fact, mud brick structures range from primitive to Pinterest-worthy. Among the largest buildings made entirely of mud is The Great Mosque of Djenné in central Mali, designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The walls are made of sun-baked earthen bricks cemented together with a mortar of sand and mud, then plastered with more mud.

Hippies and homesteaders are DIY-ing cob dwellings made from a mix of soil, clay and straw that’s kneaded together, often by bare feet, and then clumped and smoothed into walls. Despite the name, no corn cobs are involved in the building process. Also known as cobb or clom, the name comes from an Old English term that refers to the way clumps of mud are layered on top of each other to form the thick walls. Cob buildings have real staying power. Cob homes more than 500 years old are still standing and being lived in in the United Kingdom. And new ones are going up thanks to books, workshops and online how-to courses from experts at This Cob House and the Cob Cottage Company.

If you’re looking for further proof that dirt doesn’t necessarily connote poverty, look to Washington state. Did you know that Bill Gates’s 66,000-square-foot home in Medina is partially earth-sheltered, meaning that many of the living areas are tucked into the ground and wrapped with earthen walls to take advantage of natural temperature regulation? Utility bills tend to be lower in earth-sheltered structures, and the unique construction provides added privacy.

The chicest mud houses can be found in Australia. Proponents say earthen homes are cooler in summer months, and termite-proof. They’re also inexpensive if you make the bricks yourself. The government of Australia is on board and offers lots of how-tos on a website devoted to sustainability.

A modern mud brick home was recently on the market in Eltham, Australia.

Interested in giving it a try? Here’s a recipe for mud bricks. But remember, brick making is more of an art than a science, and you’ll likely take a few tries to perfect your own signature recipe.

Ingredients

Dirt (the sturdiest bricks come from dirt with a clay content of 25 to 50 percent)
Sand
Straw, grass or pine needles
Water
Sunlight
A mold to shape the bricks

Mix soil and water into a thick mud. Add some sand, then mix in the straw, grass or pine needles. Pour the mixture into your molds. Bake bricks in sunshine for five days or so. If cracks appear, cover the bricks so they’re not in direct sunlight. Remove the bricks from the molds and let them dry a few more days.

Are your bricks strong enough? Test them by dropping one from about hip-high. If it breaks, it probably has too much sand in it. Cracks that formed after drying could mean the dirt you used has too much clay.

how to build a brick house with your own hands

Home Types of houses Brick houses how to build a brick house

with your own hands

Step by step instructions

Brick is the leading building material in the world. The operational period of a house made of such material (subject to the construction technology) exceeds 100 years, and the construction period with modern technologies is several weeks.

We will tell you about how to build a brick house with your own hands, as well as about the advantages and disadvantages of such structures in the article. There are many sizes, varieties and types of such building material. Yes, bricks are used to form walls, piers, and other structural elements.

Surface may be rough, with spots, chips and color transitions. Facing or facade clinker (i.e., a decorative type of brick) is used as the main material for finishing work on the facade of architectural buildings. Moreover, it can be used to create unusual interior design installations. Consider which bricks are best for building a house.

Which bricks are best for building

Types of bricks according to the type of clay used

What about the design features?

Types of bricks by design features

Solid brick has holes, but of exclusively technological origin and consists of 84-91% clay. The advantages of this variety are high strength, the ability to withstand huge loads, and it is possible to build walls in multi-storey buildings from such a building material.
Hollow brick – it also has a different name, or rather, an effective brick that has specialized holes (they make up 10 to 45% of the total volume). It can be square in shape or rounded with non-through / through voids. It is the holes in the brick that make it possible to improve the heat-shielding qualities of the material, save raw material consumption in the production process, and also simplify certain stages in the technological chain. Such material is light enough, will not overload the base of the building and is ideal for construction. By the way, the audibility in houses made of hollow elements is much lower than in cottages made of solid bricks, because the voids play the role of noise insulation.
Ultra-efficient brick – this is a porous material that has the highest properties for perfect thermal insulation, as well as in terms of audibility. Manufacturing companies add wood chips or even polystyrene foam to the clay batch, which, under the influence of high temperature, can burn out and leave closed voids. The products are quite light, even though their size is significantly larger than that of other types of building materials. all dimensions of bricks for landscaping and building process are standardized. There are 3 main types of such building material – double (0.25 * 0.12 * 0.138 meters), one and a half (0.25 * 0.12 * 0.088 meters) and single (0.25 * 0.12 * 0.065 meters). Such dimensions will be useful to you when calculating the number of bricks to build a house. When performing a count of the number, based on the size of the buildings, you can calculate how much it costs to build a brick house.

And now let’s go directly to the process.

How to build a house out of bricks

We offer you to briefly outline all the construction stages of brick houses. Before the start of construction work, it is necessary to equip the foundation for load-bearing wall surfaces, which can be monolithic or block. To understand what kind of foundation is required for a brick house, we recommend that you first consider all types of foundations.

After that, it remains to solve the problems that are associated with the waterproofing of the base, and only after that they proceed to the direct laying of load-bearing walls and partitions. The wall thickness of bricks will vary depending on the design features, the purpose of the house, and the absence or presence of insulation material. Typically, the thickness of the partitions is chosen from 12 to 25 cm, and the thickness of the brick load-bearing wall is chosen from 38 to 51 cm.

In modern buildings, the load-bearing wall pie will consist of 1.5-2 brick masonry, an insulating layer and brick laying for the facade with a width of 12 cm. Before starting laying work, make sure that the base is perfectly level. To do this, check the measurements for verticality, slope and horizontality. It is possible to distinguish between the following schemes for laying building bricks:

Simple laying of bricks with continuous dressing of seams.
Chain bricks with seam bonding in all rows.
Lightweight appearance of bricks and their laying with the addition of insulating material.

Below is a small infographic showing the main types of bricklaying. In addition, we suggest considering the process of laying bricks. How to insulate a brick house with your own hands? Styrofoam or mineral wool is used to insulate architectural buildings made of bricks.

Plaster should be applied over the “fur coat”, fixing layers for thermal insulation, giving the building a beautiful appearance. Of the latest innovations, the “wet facade” is popular, which, as a rule, combines insulating functions and the properties of decorative finishes on external walls. From the competent installation of insulating material will depend on how much the owners of the house can save on heating in the winter time period and reduce energy costs for air conditioning in the summer. There are internal and external types of insulation.

Quite often, the first option is used, which is less expensive and still convenient in practice. The disadvantage of brick houses in comparison, for example, with buildings made of aerated concrete, will be the presence of a huge number of cold bridges in the form of seams on the brickwork. This may result in increased spending on home heating. To avoid this, it is not required to save on an additional warming process.

How to finish

And now we should consider the issue of external home cladding made of bricks. To decorate a brick wall, the simplest plaster is ideal. The master will be able to achieve, as well as non-standard relief, and perfectly smooth. This type of finish will improve the fire resistance of the building, ideally affects the soundproofing properties. for basement finishing, plaster is used much less frequently. The outer part of the brick wall is quite often decorated with decorative or natural stone. It looks very respectable or solid. Such material is very strong and reliable, and is also able to maintain its original appearance for centuries. In this case, the plinth is best decorated with natural stone. There is another extremely popular decorative type of brick wall cladding – modern thermal panels. The facade will be distinguished by a special degree of density, and it will also look elegant and aesthetically pleasing. A special advantage is that the thermal insulation qualities of the house will improve several times.

Advantages and disadvantages of a brick residential building

Building a brick house with your own hands is a wonderful thing to do. We invite you to summarize all the advantages and disadvantages of brick private buildings:

A few decades ago, bricks had no other competitors, but with the advent of new building materials on the market, all the shortcomings of brick houses became apparent.

We offer to disassemble the main ones:

The high price of the material – bricks are not the cheapest building materials, and therefore not everyone can afford the construction of brick houses and choose other analogues, cheaper ones, for example, frame houses.
Necessity that masons should be involved in laying the house. The erection of brick walls is far from the easiest task, and therefore very often hired workers with high qualifications are attracted for such work. The work of masters is paid very high.
Construction time of a brick house – building such a house from this building material will be slower than when using more modern building technologies. It usually takes several months to build brick walls, however, compared to brick houses made of wood, there is no large shrinkage, which makes it possible to complete the finish immediately after building the box and bringing the house under the roof.
Due to the huge mass of the brick house, it will need a heavy monolithic type of foundation. Such a foundation will be much more expensive than for buildings made of SIP panels or wood, which are a little lighter.
In order to provide sufficient thermal capacity of brick walls, it must be of considerable thickness. This will increase the consumption of building materials and construction estimates. Houses made of building modern materials with a similar thermal capacity will have a wall size much smaller than that of brick buildings.

You won’t believe it, but there is a grandmother from Portugal who builds a brick house with her own hands (video confirms this), and she inspires by personal example. If an older woman can do it, then so can you! Houses made of bricks are probably the most adapted and durable to our weather conditions. We also invite you to watch a short video with the calculation of the price for building a brick private house.

Previous features of the construction of prefabricated houses

The following article without errors to build a beautiful brick house

This will come in handy

in the top of views

90,000 to build a house of brick – reliable construction of your house

Brick building is a building classic. Brick has long been one of the most popular materials for the construction of buildings for any purpose – residential, industrial, commercial facilities. It is a durable, strong, environmentally friendly and affordable material for the construction of walls and partitions. One of the most important characteristics of a brick is that it makes it possible to build houses of almost any number of storeys. Sometimes foundations are also built from bricks – but this is not a common type of foundation for a house and today it is practically not used.

House in Lesavino CP

Types of bricks for laying walls

For building a house, silicate and ceramic bricks are usually used, they differ in composition and manufacturing method.

The main components of sand-lime bricks are lime and sand, which, when exposed to a temperature of approx. 200 °C, steam and pressure are sintered into a strong monolithic joint.
The ceramic brick consists mainly of clay, which is fired in a kiln at a temperature of approx. 1000°C.

The properties of silicate and ceramic bricks are significantly different, this must be taken into account when choosing a material for building a house. It should be noted that few people build from silicate brick, this material is gradually becoming a thing of the past.

The main differences between silicate and ceramic bricks

Light gray or almost white silicate brick, ceramic – various shades of terracotta color, depending on the initial color of the clay.
Sand-lime brick is very hygroscopic, which limits its use in high humidity conditions, while being stronger and denser than ceramic bricks.
Sand-lime brick has lower characteristics of heat resistance and frost resistance, in contrast to the ceramic counterpart.
The cost of ceramic bricks is much higher than silicate – the difference in price can be 15-30%.

In addition, bricks differ in technical characteristics

Size. According to GOST, the standard brick size is 250x120x65 mm, it is abbreviated as NF (normal format). Depending on the increase or decrease in its dimensions, bricks can also be 1.4 NF, 2.1 NF, 0.7 NF, 1.3 NF.
Strength grade. Depending on the allowable compressive load in kilograms that 1 sq. see brick block, it is marked M100, M125, M150, etc.
Frost resistance index . It is measured in the number of freezing cycles that a brick can withstand without losing its performance – F-15, F-25, F-50, etc.
Void. This is a characteristic of a brick block, depending on the presence or absence of holes in it, the volume of which can reach 50% of the mass of the brick – it can be solid, slotted or perforated, porous.

You can finally decide on the choice of brick for laying walls only after studying the specific project on which the house will be built. It is necessary to analyze not only the number of storeys, wall thickness, the load on the foundation, but also the climatic conditions in which the house will be operated.

House designed by Tiffany

Who will build it

You can build a brick house with your own hands without resorting to the services of professional builders – it will save a significant amount of money. But you need to be aware that laying bricks is not an easy task. That is why specialists charge quite expensive fees for their work. Having decided to build a house on your own, you must understand how many risks you are taking on. You can read more about this in our dedicated article.

There are a number of requirements for the quality of brickwork and compliance with established standards. It is important to take into account the whole range of factors, such as the brand of brick and masonry mortar, the need to moisten the blocks before laying, the correctness of the seams and dressing, the exact observance of the level of the surfaces and corners of the brick, and many other nuances.

Remember that the durability and strength of the constructed structure depends on the correct fulfillment of the conditions. An inexperienced person can overestimate his own strengths and make critical mistakes. Ultimately, this may not lead to savings, but, on the contrary, to an increase in costs, due to the correction of inept work and the purchase of new material.

Building a house is a costly process from all sides, when starting a construction site, you need to be prepared for significant expenses. But the house is built for more than one year – it will serve you, and then remain for the next few generations of the family. Therefore, experts strongly do not recommend saving on professional designers and builders – choosing qualified and responsible contractors will ensure you have trouble-free operation of your home for many years.

Choosing the right people who will build your house is a separate serious issue. Earlier, we have already considered in detail all the key factors that you need to focus on when choosing a construction company or team. First of all, you need to choose a reputable reputable company that has sufficient experience in the construction market and real positive feedback about its work. Carefully study the site and portfolio with completed projects. Carefully analyze the construction estimate – you should be wary of promises to build a house too quickly or too low a price for services.

To build walls for a 250 sq. m. It will take about 1.5-2 months, depending on the number of storeys of the house, the complexity of the project and the thickness of the walls. As for the cost of building a brick house, this value is very variable. It depends not only on the architectural design and brand of bricks, but also on the geographic location of the construction. To find out the objective cost of building a brick house in your area, we advise you to order an estimate from several construction companies and compare the proposals received.

ORDER A SERVICE for the construction of a brick house

House in the KP Millennium Park

Stages of building a brick house

After selecting a project, approving a construction estimate and obtaining all the necessary permits, the process of building a house begins. This is a complex technological event, consisting of certain stages.

Stages of creating a house

Preparation of a site for construction – removal of debris and weeds, excavation, leveling the site, draining the soil, etc.
Foundation construction – marking, digging a trench or pit, placing formwork, reinforcing, drilling, pouring concrete, waterproofing, etc., depending on the type of foundation.
Wall and partition masonry. It is carried out depending on the choice of masonry method using a special cement mortar.
Construction of floors – depending on the project, they can be slab, wooden or monolithic.
Roof installation – roofing work includes the installation of the truss system, the installation of the lathing, the laying of waterproofing, vapor barrier, insulation and laying the final coating.
Breeding of engineering communications – water supply, sewerage, heating, electricity, ventilation.
Exterior finishing – it is recommended to insulate brick houses, this process is easily combined with exterior wall cladding, while leaving a ventilation gap between these two layers.

There are several types of brickwork. The technology lies in the fact that the corners of the load-bearing walls are first erected, while the bricks are laid in such a way as to overlap each other, creating a castle. Strict observance of the level vertically and horizontally ensures durability and a neat appearance of the house.

CECARY Masonry Brick

Brown brick laying

Masonry in three bricks

000 9000 9000 CREAL CRELD REMOUSE ARE REMOUS bottom row. The upper brick should be laid out on the seam between the lower bricks – this will evenly distribute the load across the entire width of the wall and provide increased structural strength. In addition, it is necessary to periodically apply dressing – it is also performed in various ways, depending on the masonry method. At the same time, laying more than 4 rows of bricks in one day is not recommended, the masonry can be deformed under its own weight.