type of bonding for garden and cavity extension walls

[Hal Styli]

hello, can someone please help...

1) for an external cavity wall please rank these by strength/durability, strongest first.

a) english b) stretcher c) header d) flemish e) flemish garden wall f) english garden wall

If I want a 3 story extension will any of them be particularly well suited or badly suited.

[Peter Taylor]

Unless you have a particular reason for spending twice as much on the labour and extra wastage of facing bricks making snapped headers to create a different bond, I would do what everybody else does and build the cavity wall in stretcher bond.

If the wall is ½B thick (102mm) Stretcher Bond is the only choice unless you want to try to make the wall appear thicker. If it is solid 1B (215mm) or more thick, I would go:

d, a, e, f, b, c

There's not too much to choose between English & Flemish on strength and durability, it's more important to match up to what's there already. Stretcher Bond is only for ½B 102mm thick walls and a 225mm wall built of it would effectively be 2 No ½B walls built together without a tie, so it would be less stable than English or Flemish. Header Bond is the least stable and ugly, and only used on curved work when absolutely necessary.

Peter

[Space Cowboy]

Snip

I would disagree slightly. On the basis that a garden wall is to retain something then it needs to the 1B thick. English bond is by far the stronger bond.

I would therefore go for -

a) english d) flemish f) english garden wall e) flemish garden wall c) header b) stretcher

In the end it will very much depend on what you want it for, to retain the house, flower beds, height, ground conditions, traffic nearby etc.

In the extreme you might want a concrete / blok wall and then faced with BWK.

[Peter Taylor]

Space Cowboy wrote

Yes, true, but I was thinking about boundary walls, not retaining walls.

Aha - the age-old argument! I remember a tea break on site once when two brickies were arguing over this and it ended in fisticuffs. The one supporting English Bond thought the other was being unpatriotic! :o)

Peter