What is wrong with Pompey bricks ?

On 02 Oct 2023, N_Cook wrote

From the photo, it looks like the brick facing wasn't resting on anything structural. When the lintel or whatever it was sitting on failed, the outer skin of bricks had nothing to hold it up.

So my guess isn't that it's down the quality of the bricks or the geology, but just a crappy structural design.

I'd not closely looked at that pic and I was thinking the latest was a repeat of the previous 2 examples with outer skin collapse down to ground level. ISTR the expert opinion for the first such collapse was a batch of very weak bricks for foundations that were not up to the job over time.

On 02 Oct 2023, N_Cook wrote

It won't be news to the readers of this group, but I can still be surprised at just how botched some details are.

The two worst ones I've seen were one with a window that had no lintel at all, and the brick wall above sat on the double-glazed window unit; and one where a downstairs breeze-block wall was removed with no support inserted, so the upstairs wall (also breeze block) wasn't supported at all (or was sitting on god-knows-what).

The other month I as watching a Youtube video about the replacement of a steel lintel in a 1960/70 build. Not only had it been incorrectly installed but had rusted. The expansion of the metal resulted in a lot of cracking of the brickwork above it. It was suggested the whole housing estate had been built to the same poor standard with respect to lintels above windows.

If the wall in the photo had been built on lintel that had rusted and expanded in size I would not be surprised if it fell down. That is a very long window for a lintel to span with only a narrow pillar in the middle for support.

Recalls Fawlty Towers ...

"So did you use an RSJ or concrete lintel ?" "No, a wooden one ...."

That's how this house was built - in 1911.

Would the builder of the three brick buildings, be the same person ?

Paul

I was going to say similar, nothing wrong with wooden lintels if done right.

Or the same cowboy works-in-progress building inspector. I'm no structural engineer I must say firstly. Near to me is a new (less than 20 years) 3/4 storey housing developement, built next to the River Itchen, so a flood wall around it, to 'protect' against a surge tide event. But i'd say that it was an accident waiting to happen and when it fails under the hydraulic pressure , let alone any wave action, it would collapse and take out the housing complex within ,from the dynamics of such a situation. This bund wall is single brick construction with flimsy single brick pillars at 2.2m spacing, even if these pillars do contain some steel work then not much steel. For added weakness , presumably for aesthetics, the top string course of bricks is laid header down and a string course mid way up also laid vertically.

My 1908 build house has wood lintels. However, at the back of the house the top of the windows also have a shallow brick arch to support the 5 courses bricks above.

There is only one steel lintel where a window opening was modified.

Around here in the late 60s and early 70s, an estate was built over a clay quarry and right down to a small stream. The surveyor at the time got the builders to build the houses over the quarry on a concrete raft, and put in deeper footings near the stream. However there are several things wrong with the estate today. The concrete raft at one side is dropping and there is an increasing drop in the road down the hill, and a large hole opened up at the front of one house, taking their porch with it, and significant work has had to be done to fix it. The houses themselves are built with bricks that are very pale in colour, and in places you can see them crumbling on the outside, Add to that they built several garage blocks which are now too narrow to get a car in and be able to get out of it. The roads were made too narrow because now nobody can use the garages, the cars are all parked in the street and hence with two wheels on the footway making it impassable for pedestrians and damaging it, to do otherwise would risk a fire engine not being able to get down the road, which is a cul de sac. At the river, the rubble the builders created seems to have been put only a few inches below ground and now erosion is making them be seen, and when the gas folk wanted a new pipeline across between the river and houses, it took months to get all the rubble out to lay the 3ft dia pipe, and now there is a dent where it runs and at times a strange moaning noise from below ground, no doubt due to the gas passing through it. There are Electricity pylons overhead as well, and one house is almost underneath these and its changed hands many times with people complain of headaches.

Brian

On 03 Oct 2023, Chris Green wrote

Agreed, but the one I mentioned didn't have a lintel of any sort -- the bricks sat on the double-glazed window unit.......

I think we were responding to the "No, a wooden one ....".

Ah, yes; apologies.

As a side note, though I'd add that while old practices can be perfectly fine -- wooden lintels are a good example -- there have been a number of times over the years that my reaction to "They don't build 'em like they used to" has been "Thank God for that..."

I've seen a couple of 8' + openings in brickwork with no support. The 8' triple brick thick one was still good after 100 years, the bigger one, maybe 12' single skin started to fail after, not sure, over 10 years anyway.