Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called coursesJoseph Moxon. Mechanick Exercises: Or, The Doctrine of Handy-Works. Applied to the Arts of Smithing, Joinery, Carpentry, Turning, Bricklaying. Printed for Daniel Midwinter and Thomas Leigh. 1703. London. Page 129. "Three or four or five courses of Bricks to be laid."Nicholson. "By a Course, in walling, is meant the bricks contained between two planes parallel to the horizon, and terminated by the faces of the wall. The thickness is that of one brick with mortar. The mass formed by bricks laid in concentric order, for arches or vaults, is also denominated a Course." are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall.
Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by size. For example, in the UK a brick is defined as a unit having dimensions of less than 112.5mm (inches) and a block is defined as a unit having one or more dimensions greater than the largest possible brick.
Brick is a popular medium for constructing buildings, and examples of brickwork are found through history as far back as the Bronze Age. The fired-brick faces of the ziggurat of ancient Dur-Kurigalzu in Iraq date from around 1400 BC, and the brick buildings of ancient Mohenjo-daro in modern day Pakistan were built around 2600 BC. Much older examples of brickwork made with dried (but not fired) bricks may be found in such ancient locations as Jericho in Palestine, Çatal Höyük in Anatolia, and Mehrgarh in Pakistan. These structures have survived from the Stone Age to the modern day.
Brick dimensions are expressed in construction or technical documents in two ways as co-ordinating dimensions and working dimensions. Coordination dimensions are the actual physical dimensions of the brick with the mortar required on one header face, one stretcher face and one bed. Working dimensions is the size of a manufactured brick. It is also called the nominal size of a brick. Brick size may be slightly different due to shrinkage or distortion due to firing, etc.
An example of a co-ordinating metric commonly used for bricks in the UK is as follows:Brunskill, p. 39. "British Standard 3921 of 1969, gave dimensions of 215 mm by 102.5 mm by 65 mm [...]."British Standards Institution. Specification for Masonry Units. Part 1: Clay Masonry Units. BSI, London, 2003, BS EN 771.The Compressive Strength of Modern Earth Masonry, Andrew Heath, Mike Lawrence, Peter Walker and Clyde Fourie. BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials, University of Bath and Natural Building Technologies (NBT). Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Non-conventional Materials and Technologies (NOCMAT 2009). 6–9 September 2009, Bath, UK. "All earth masonry units were intended to be 'standard' brick size (215x102.5x65mm) if they were fired, but because they did not have additional shrinkage from firing, the average size was 223x106x67mm." Bricks of dimensions 215 mm × 102.5 mm × 65 mm; Mortar beds (horizontal) and perpends (vertical) of a uniform 10 mm.
In this case the co-ordinating metric works because the length of a single brick (215 mm) is equal to the total of the width of a brick (102.5 mm) plus a perpend (10 mm) plus the width of a second brick (102.5 mm).
There are many other brick sizes worldwide, and many of them use this same co-ordinating principle.
Terminology
As the most common bricks are rectangular prisms, six surfaces are named as follows: Top and bottom surfaces are called beds Ends or narrow surfaces are called headers or header faces Sides or wider surfaces are called stretchers or stretcher faces
Mortar placed between bricks is also given separate names with respect to their position. Mortar placed horizontally below or top of a brick is called a bed, and mortar placed vertically between bricks is called a perpend, or, in the United States, a head joint.
A brick made with just rectilinear dimensions is called a solid brick. Bricks might have a depression on both beds or on a single bed. The depression is called a frog, and the bricks are known as frogged bricks. Frogs can be deep or shallow but should never exceed 20% of the total volume of the brick. Cellular bricks have depressions exceeding 20% of the volume of the brick. Perforated bricks have holes through the brick from bed to bed, cutting it all the way. Most of the building standards and good construction practices recommend the volume of holes should not exceed 20% of the total volume of the brick.
Parts of brickwork include bricks, beds and perpends. The bed is the mortar upon which a brick is laid.Nicholson, p. 166. "BED.—The under-surface of bricks when laid in any kind of work." A perpend is a vertical joint between any two bricks and is usually—but not always—filled with mortar.Reports of artisans selected by a committee appointed by the council of the Society of Arts to visit the Paris Universal exhibition, 1867. Published for the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Published by Bell and Daldy, York Street, Covent Garden, London. Printed by W. Trounce, Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, London. 1867. Part 1. Bricklaying by George Howell. Page 194. "The beauty of brickwork will very much depend upon the 'perpends' being perfectly kept, that is, the perfect regularity of the perpendicular joints right up the building."
A "face brick" is a higher-quality brick, designed for use in visible external surfaces in face-work, as opposed to a "filler brick" for internal parts of the wall, or where the surface is to be covered with stucco or a similar coating, or where the filler bricks will be concealed by other bricks (in structures more than two bricks thick).
Orientation
A brick is given a classification based on how it is laid, and how the exposed face is oriented relative to the face of the finished wall.
Stretcher or stretching brick A brick laid flat with its long narrow side exposed.John Houghton. A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade. 1693. Issue 74. Published by Randal Taylor near Stationers-Hall. London. "A Brick-wall of a Foot and half thick is commonly made by Stretchers and Headers, that is, by laying on the out-side one Brick, so as to have the narrowest side of it to be seen longways, and the next to have only the end seen, and the Brick lying on the broad side, and so on, a Stretcher and a Header." Header or heading brick A brick laid flat with its width exposed. Soldier A brick laid vertically with its long narrow side exposed.Whitney Clark Huntington. Building Construction. Types of Construction, Materials, and Cost Estimating. New York: Wiley. London: Chapman & Hall. 1929. Page 130. "Belt courses and flat arches may be formed of brick[s] set on end with the narrow side exposed. Such bricks are called soldiers." Sailor A brick laid vertically with the broad face of the brick exposed.Sovinski, p. 43. "Those brick positions oriented in a horizontal alignment are called stretcher, header, rowlock stretcher, and rowlock. A rowlock stretcher is sometimes called a shiner. The two corresponding vertical orientations are the soldier and sailor positions." Rowlock A brick laid on the long narrow side with the short end of the brick exposed.Samuel Y. Harris. Building Pathology. Wiley. New York. 2001. Page 212. "The short face, or the end laid horizontally, is a header; laid vertically, a rowlock." Shiner or rowlock stretcher A brick laid on the long narrow side with the broad face of the brick exposed.Sovinski, p. 43. "Those brick positions oriented in a horizontal alignment are called stretcher, header, rowlock stretcher, and rowlock. A rowlock stretcher is sometimes called a shiner."
Cut The practice of laying uncut full-sized bricks wherever possible gives brickwork its maximum possible strength. In the diagrams below, such uncut full-sized bricks are coloured as follows:
Occasionally, however, a brick must be cut to fit a given space or to be the right shape for some purpose — for example, creating an offset (a lap) at the beginning of a course.Charles F.Mitchell. Building Construction. Part 1. First Stage or Elementary Course. Second Edition—Revised. Published by B.T. Batsford, 52 High Holborn. 1889. Page 22. In some cases these special shapes or sizes are manufactured. In the diagrams below, some of the cuts most commonly used for generating a lap are coloured as follows:
A brick cut to three-quarters of its length, laid flat and appearing like a three-quarter stretcher. A brick cut to three-quarters of its length, laid flat and appearing like a normal header, but with three-quarters of the length behind the exposed face. A brick cut in half across the middle, laid flat and appearing like a normal header, but with half the length behind the exposed face. A lengthwise half brick, laid as a half-width header with its smallest face exposed standing vertically. A queen closer is often used for the purpose of creating a lap.Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911. BRICKWORK. "[...] portions of a brick [...] a half header in width, [...] are called queen closers[.]"
Less frequently used cuts are all coloured as follows:
A brick cut to a quarter of its length. A queen closer cut to three-quarters of its length. A brick with one corner cut away, leaving one header face at half its standard width.Charles F.Mitchell. Building Construction. Part 1. First Stage or Elementary Course. Second Edition—Revised. Published by B.T. Batsford, 52 High Holborn. 1889. Page 18. "King Closers are bricks cut so that one end is half the width of a brick, and [are] used in positions where the greater width at back would add strength to the bond[...]."
Bonding A nearly universal rule in brickwork is that perpends should not be contiguous across courses.Nicholson, p. 167. "[...] an arrangement, or combination of bricks when laid upon each other, [such] that the perpendicular joint formed by any two adjacent bricks may, at all times, be covered by the centre (or nearly so) of one laid immediately over the joint, by which means the nearest approximation to solidity will be attained that such materials are capable of producing."
Walls, running linearly and extending upwards, can be of varying depth or thickness. Typically, the bricks are laid also running linearly and extending upwards, forming wythes or leafs. It is as important as with the perpends to bond these leaves together. Historically, the dominant method for consolidating the leaves together was to lay bricks across them, rather than running linearly.
Brickwork observing either or both of these two conventions is described as being laid in one or another bond.Nicholson, p. 347. "BRICKS ARE LAID in a varied, but regular, form of connection, or Bond, as exhibited in Plate LXXXV."Nicholson, p. 329. "BOND.—That regular connection, in lapping the stones upon one another, when carrying up the work, which forms an inseparable mass of building."
Thickness (and leaves) A leaf is as thick as the width of one brick. A wall is said to be "one brick thick" if it is as wide as the length of a brick. Accordingly, a single-leaf wall is a half brick thickness; a wall with the simplest possible masonry transverse bond is said to be one brick thick, and so on.CITBCONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY TRAINING BOARDTraining WorkbookSetting Out BrickworkPositioning Ranging Lines, Gauge, Dry Bonding, Broken BondingWB 272 Construction Industry Training Board, Bircham Newton, Kings Lynn, Norfolk PE31 6RH. 1994. . Page 35–37. "Wall thickness terms relate to a stretcher dimension of a brick. Wall (A) [pictured] is termed a half brick wall. Wall (B) [pictured] is termed a one brick wall [...]. This wall is a half brick thick wall [...]. This wall is a one brick thick wall [...]."