Brickwork

Brickwork is <a href="/facts/Masonry/TlaDzpUp">masonry</a> produced by a <a href="/facts/Bricklayer/38fsc60X">bricklayer</a>, using <a href="/facts/Brick/2CBPgDIK">bricks</a> and <a href="/facts/Mortar_(masonry)/UsDMxYAh">mortar</a>. Typically, rows of bricks called <a href="/facts/Course_(architecture)/L96jFPdp">courses</a> are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick <a href="/facts/Wall/RsuthzLu">wall</a>.
Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by size. For example, in the UK a brick is defined as a unit having dimensions less than 337.5 mm × 225 mm × 112.5 mm (13.3 in × 8.9 in × 4.4 in) 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 <a href="/facts/Bronze_Age/c09qWcTt">Bronze Age</a>. The fired-brick faces of the <a href="/facts/Ziggurat/5aB99m7n">ziggurat</a> of ancient <a href="/facts/Dur-Kurigalzu/WK3k28zV">Dur-Kurigalzu</a> in Iraq date from around 1400 BC, and the brick buildings of ancient <a href="/facts/Mohenjo-daro/aC8lQMa4">Mohenjo-daro</a> 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 <a href="/facts/Jericho/934P9FMl">Jericho</a> in Palestine, <a href="/facts/%25C3%2587atalh%25C3%25B6y%25C3%25BCk/IGF4CjTc">Çatal Höyük</a> in Anatolia, and <a href="/facts/Mehrgarh/7JfFIqW5">Mehrgarh</a> in Pakistan. These structures have survived from the <a href="/facts/Stone_Age/r1KMneWW">Stone Age</a> to the modern day.

Brick dimensions are expressed in construction or technical documents in two ways as co-ordinating dimensions and working dimensions.

<ul><li>Coordination dimensions are the actual physical dimensions of the brick with the mortar required on one header face, one stretcher face and one bed.</li>
<li>Working dimensions is the size of a manufactured brick. It is also called the nominal size of a brick.</li></ul>
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:

<ul><li>Bricks of dimensions 215 mm × 102.5 mm × 65 mm;</li>
<li>Mortar beds (horizontal) and perpends (vertical) of a uniform 10 mm.</li></ul>
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.

Brickwork open-in-new

Brickwork