Hello,
Is it normal for exterior brickwork to have tiny cracks in the bricks. Quite a few of my bricks have these tiny cracks about an inch long and less that 1mm wide. The house is about 45 years old.
Is this just what happens to aged bricks?
Sorry if this is a daft question but I have nothing else to worry about tonight!
Thanks,
Graham
No, this doesnt just happen to bricks. Sounds like structural movement. It takes a lot more than 1mm before anything has to be done, but of course investigating now may prevent things worsening to that point. Prepare to be caned by your insurance.
NT
Hello,
Are you sure about this? I would say that 1 in 10 of all the bricks have these tiny cracks. This is uniformly over the whole house. There are no other signs of problems, no zig zag cracks between bricks in the mortar.
The mortar by the way if very strong, looks like a sharp sand mix to me.
Graham
Looking at my neighbours house I can see the same on his bricks as well.
A few pix are are worth a thousand words.. post some somewhere and a reference to them then we'll see;!...
wow! what a helpful undramatic response NT? also a load of s**te as 1 inch cracks won't even extend beyond one brick! I seriously doubt there's your "structural movement" but seriously believe you are a scaremongerer ;>)
Cheers Jim K
Good idea, I'll do that tomorrow.
A picture would be useful. Do you know for sure they weren't always there?
Yes, pictures tomorrow.
No, I don't know for sure, this is the first time I've really inspected the brickwork, the bricks could have been like that from manufacture.
From my geology lessons... I would say: "Do all the cracks line up so that they are roughly parallel to each other from brick to brick, or are the crack orientations fairly random?"
If fairly random, I'd say this was a rather sub optimum set of bricks and those cracks could hold water and freeze and gradually lose their faces.
If all orientated the same way it could just be that they were all made exactly the same way, but it may be that the whole structure is under stress or strain from one direction.
S
I see, in that case as other have said just the way the bricks were made. The firing cycle causes them to change size marginally, and as exterior and interior are at differeing temps some of the time, cracks can result. I thought you meant a load of them were roughly lined up, sorry I misunderstood.
NT
Thanks for everybody's replies.
I see, in that case as other have said just the way the bricks were made. The firing cycle causes them to change size marginally, and as exterior and interior are at differeing temps some of the time, cracks can result. I thought you meant a load of them were roughly lined up, sorry I misunderstood.
NT
Around all the brick clay pits of Hansons in Stewartby Mid Beds area, the paths were all made up of broken and reject bricks. Looks like a fair old proportion do crack up in the firing.
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