brick...classic or modern

Another installment in our continuing series on siding options for your home.  In this post we will discuss brick and its usefulness as a siding for your home. 

When I think of brick as an exterior material I almost immediatly go to the college campus buildings (Collegiate Gothic Architecture), or Post-WWII suburban homes, or even Southern colonial homes.  Brick as an aeshthetic material can be difficult, especially if your aim is to creat a unique piece of architecture and not a traditional style.  Brick, in my opinion, lends itself  to nostalgia.  There is a warmth and familiarity and a sense of the past when you see a brick facade.

Brick has been on our building tradition for a very long time, and was part of our technological progession from caves to built dwellings.  Brick started out as essentially sun-dried mud, and eventually has evolved into the modern and expressive building material that it is today.  All bricks are unitzed pieces of masonry that are bonded together with mortar to create a contiquous system.  Laying brick is a labor intensive process is part of the reason for the expense of installing brick on your home.

Brick has some of the qualities of dimensionsal stone that we have discussed previosuly, but with less cost that stone because it is manufactured and mass produced.  Brick can be made any many different sized and colors and can even be custom-shaped for a special project.  Of course, if cost is a concern (and when is not?) standard brick sizes are your best bet.  Some of the general drawbacks with brick is it can efloursece (click the link to learn more).  All brick is susceptable to freeze-thaw cycles that can damage the face of the material and all the mortar joints will have to detailed correctly as they have a huge impact on the life of the wall.

A brick wall can be a simple wall system that consists of several layers (wythes) of bricks tied to together with mortar to "glue" them into a solid wall; this is a mass wall system.  The benefits of a brick mass walls are similar to those discussed in our dimensional stone wall discussion; a mass wall has thermal mass that helps regulate the termperature inside your home.  Another benefit of any mass wall is that it provides excellent acoustical separation from the adjacent space; whether you live next to a noisy street or have neighgors close by, a mass wall might be the right choice to block out the sound.  Be aware, however, that mass walls are more expensive that cavity walls (discussed below) due to the shear amount of material it takes to construct them and make them structurally stable.  Some of the drawbacks to a mass wall is that it can be hard to keep water from infiltrating the system and the wall takes up more space than a conventional wall.  The freezing and thawing of moisture inside the wall can cause the wall to fail, so careful planning will need to be taken to plan the thickness of the wall to account for moisture penetration and drying time.  Also, in a tight floor plan, a mass wall may not be an option unless you are willing to give up space on the interior of your home. 

The modern use of brick as a siding material would be its use in a cavity wall.  This application is a more recent use of the material than its mass wall ancestor; this wall system is similar to the system used with siding materials we have already discussed (wood, composites, metal, and manufactured stone). In a cavity wall the brick veneer will have to be hung off the backing structural wall.  While this will add to the structural requirements of your stud wall or block wall, a cavity wall configuration will also provide some increased benefits to water infiltration (due to rainscreen principles) and total insulating value (because you can add rigid insulation in the cavity if you desire) of the wall.  If you are going to use a brick veneer for your siding, then I would highly recommend implementing a rainscreen wall.  The benefits will be worth the extremely minor amount of additional work and cost it will take to upgrade.  The cost, however, for either wall system is going to be more expensive than your composite siding ro manufactured stone. 

Whatever you do, please don't use the fake brick sheathing you see at the store.  You are not fooling anyone, and it does nothing to evoke the feeling of substanance and permanence that is meant to be fealt by using a heavy masonry product.  It's like the wallpaper my parent had in our basement of the forets.  Really?  I know it was the 70's, but all you had to do was turn your head to the right and the actual forest was right there.  I wonder what my kids will scratch their heads at?

Finally I will leave you with a famous (in architecture circles at least) quoute from a very famous Architect, Lois Kahn.  The quoute is in context of the nature of materials and that materials should be used for what they are intended and not superficially  artifaced.  Anyhow...enjoy!

“To express is to drive.  And when you want to give something presence, you have to consult nature.  And there is where Design comes in.
And if you think of Brick, for instance, and you say to Brick,"What do you want Brick?"

And Brick says to you, "I like an Arch."

And if you say to Brick, "Look, arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lentil over you. What do you think of that?"

"Brick?"

Brick says: "... I like an Arch"”

--Louis Kahn