New brick design center

I have the pleasure of bringing you an inside shot of our new Brick Design Center in Williamsburg. This is the state of the art design center for choosing brick and stone for your home. We have work stations to lay products out along with your home plans to help the home owner to see what their new home design will look like. I can not think of a better place to sip a fresh cup of coffee and remove the stress of choosing exteriors for your home.

Outdoor Fireplaces, FireRock

This product is probably the best thing in the masonry world since sliced bread in the kitchen. This is a full masonry fireplace that can be used internal and external. This fireplace can be assembled in one day by two people. Assuming footer has already been poured. FireRock is the manufacture of this product. I assembled this fireplace in our brick gardens at our Williamsburg shop. I left sections of the fireplace uncovered so you can see the fireplace. Also, I left a cut away in the fire box to show how the fire brick line the box. If you use this product in doors, you would add a damper, for outdoors leave the damper out. You can set the fireplace up for gas use as well. The stack on top can be extended up to a height needed to clear a roof line. The best thing about this product is the time needed to assemble and the cost. For a typical brick and block fireplace the cost will be around $15,000 to $30,000 and higher. You will need around 8,000 to 15,000 brick and flue liners and filler brick. It will take around 1 week to assemble. Oh yah, make sure the mason has experience in building the fireplace. I had a customer who designed a 2 sided fireplace in the middle of his home, the mason did not design the smoke chamber correctly. The fireplace would not draw and the smoke filled the home with smoke. This is not a problem to have. In order to correct the problem, they will have to tear the chimney down to the smoke chamber and redesign and then rebuild the chimney.

Brick Complaints

On my travels today I passed this building. Do you notice the off color between the windows? If you don't, stay out of the brick business. Just kidding. Everytime I have encountered a brick complaint like this job, I spend half the time convincing the customer that nothing is wrong with the brick, the problem is with the mortar. This is a great example showing this situation. Mortar accounts for roughly 18% of the color your brain receives from the building. Mortar colors change from several reasons. One reason could be the quality of the mortar. A couple of other reasons could stem from the manufacturing process, wrong bags, changed the process, different person mixing the batches..... Things on the job that could change mortar color are, Initial rate of absorption (IRA) of the brick, change of people who mix the mortar on job site, strike mortar too soon, strike mortar too late. These factors could change the color of the mortar drastically. There are ways to tell which of these cardinal sins have been violated.

Brick Quoins

The accents you see on the corners of the home are called "quoins." These are raised quoins, some quoins are flush with the wall and the joints are raked out. This will give a depth perception. Be careful when raking the joints, this could be a possible water leak. Because you are removing mortar from the joint. One way to avoid this problem is to use solid brick for the quoins. Keep in mind when doing quoins, you can use the same color of brick and still get an accent. Or you can use another color, like this home, to help with the accent. Either way, this adds character to a home. Around the windows is called a single batt. Some homes you will see a double batt around the windows. You could rake the joints a little to add to the accent, and you could use a different color of brick and add to the accent. These are simple things that do not call for special shaped brick and still give added value for your home. When I see items like this on a home, it tells me the homeowner and or the builder took time to think about this detail. Good job Wilmik Homes.

Efflorescence

Here is another example of efflorescence, but on split face block. This building is about 2 years old. I would be checking the top edge of the roof. It does not look like a lot of water, but it will not get better.

Brick stains, efflorescence stians

The white stuff you see is efflorescence. You will see this on new construction typically. In a simple term, this is soluble salts. Water is getting behind the structure and is weeping out through the mortar and the water evaporates from the surface and a layer of salt is left behind. This is a new structure and I would not be too concerned, "yet." However, if this continues, the efflorescence can be your friend. What this tells me is that water is entering behind the wall and could lead to bigger problems if it is not addressed. See how the white is on the mortar joints, this means the efflorescence is coming from the mortar. If the white was on the center of the brick, the efflorescence would be from the brick. Another place you will efflorescence is on chimneys. If it is an older home you need to check the top of the chimney for water leaks. A good quick fix is to cap the top of the chimney with metal flashing or cap. Some people think to blob mortar on top to seal the top of the chimney, the mortar will crack after a time and the leaks will continue.

Stains on brick

Here is the front entrance of of home with an awful stain on the brick. Most people have know what the stain is, but for those who don't, it is an iron stain. This is caused by the sprinkler system. In our area most people use shallow wells for irrigation. This adds to the problem with the increased iron from the ground. Most people do not filter or treat ground water for irrigation, and why should they? The first line of fix is to make sure that sprinklers are not hitting brick work or any other item that you do not want iron stains on. To remove this iron stain one should check with your local brick person and ask for brick cleaners to remove stain. If this is not an option try u

sing CLR, this is Calcium Lime Rust remover. This is usually in local hardware stores or Lowe's or Home Depot. If you go this route, treat a small area to make sure the result is desired. Keep those sprinklers off the brick!!!!

I forgot to add, " DO NOT USE A PRESSURE WASHER!!!!"

Remember the previous post, the color layer is a very thin layer of color, the pressure washer will wash the color off the face of the brick. Then the brick would be a wire cut red. Blah!!!

Clay body brick

The brick to the right show an example of a red body brick (top ) and a buff body (bottom). The amazing thing about the red body brick is the stark white face. The red body is typically used fro residential construction. The red clays are typically found through out the US. A thin layer of coloring is applied to the red body before firing. The colors range from white, gray, black, browns, and just about any color in between. Typically the color range can be broken down into whites, browns, grays, pinks, reds, orange (terracotta). It's not as though a consumer can contact a brick manufacture and ask for a green brick.

The buff brick (bottom) is typically used for commercial jobs. Notice the body color is the same as the face of the brick. This is through the body color. If you chipped the top brick you will see a red spot, if you chipped the buff brick you will see the buff color. Other than price, this is the big difference between the two. Some people refer to the buff colored brick as "add mix." Most of the buff brick are manufactured in the mid US. However, there are a couple of buff producers in the Carolina's. I was a Plant Manager for a plant in Mississippi a couple of years ago, and it was then that I learned of the buff material. Basically the buff material used for brick manufacturing is of a low grade kaolin clay. The high grade Kaolin are used in Rolaids and fine china. Also, kaolin is known as a treat such as ice cream in the Appalachian region. Yes, people consumed the stuff, NOT ME. Depending on the size of the deposit of the kaolin, surface mining or pot mining will be the process to reclaim the kaolin. Thousands of years ago the Gulf of Mexico would flood up into Tennessee. Then the waters would recede and the buff clays would be washed down from Tennessee and deposit down through Mississippi. The clay deposits would be in pockets. This would happen several times, which caused a layering effect. It is amazing the layers you can see in the mining pits. The fossil hunters love the mining areas. Anyway, I could go on, if you find this interesting go visit a student from a university and ask about this process, they will talk forever. They very seldom get some one interested on this topic. I did enjoy the information. Thank you Ole Miss.

Through the body colored brick

Just a quick post before I go on my journey today. This home is the Acme Glacier White brick. This brick is a clay product, but the clay is from the mid US. This type of brick is usually specified for commercial jobs, but it makes a very new home as well. I will do a more in depth post showing the difference between the two products. The mortar is Giant Almond type N. Ken Cohen of Cohen Homes of Virginia Beach was the builder. Great Job!!!

How to identify a brick complaint.

This post will deal with brick problems. Yes, brick manufactures do make mistakes. The range of problems stem from mining to packaging. Believe me there are a lot of steps in between. Most problems are ones that are visible after the brick are installed into the wall. When you look at the picture above you will see a brighter top half than the bottom half. This problem stems from the extrusion or milling department. This is where they add color agents to the face of the column during extrusion to give the brick color. The way they add color is to use engobes, sand blast, dry box, drag rags, mud box, and a whole arsenal of contraptions. More than likely this complaint had a little help by 2 runs of brick were used on this job. That is a no no. When purchasing your brick ask to have the whole job from the same run. More than likely they had 2 different people to run the color additive during the production of this brick. One person set the controller on #3 and the next person may have set the controller on #6. This is probably why the color is a lot heavier. With my professional trained eye, I can see that the brick is the problem. However, do not always assume the brick is the problem. I have seen brick walls as bad or worse and the brick was not the problem. The mortar was the problem. Of course you are saying in your head, "WHAT, HOW?" Keep in mind, when you look at a brick wall, about 18% of the color your brain is receiving is the color of the mortar. Mortar has a big influence on the appearance of the wall. If the mortar is not consistent in color, this will effect the brick. There is a simple way to determine what is the problem, if you don't have a trained professional eye, such as mine. Take take some 4" inch wide masking tape. Block off a square area that covers the good and bad area. Example, our taped box would include the bright area with darker area in the same box. Now take some 1/4" masking tape and cover all of the mortar joints inside the box. Stand back at least 20 feet. Do the brick inside the box match? If the brick match then the mortar is the problem. If you still see the color problem inside the box, them the brick is the problem. I could tell you some stories about how I had to convince some people what the true problem was with there home. There are steps that could be used to resolve these issue, but the best solution is if a problem is identified, get the supplier out on the job so the issue could be resolved before the brick get into the wall. If you are adding on to your home or building a new home, check the job everyday to make sure the brick meet your expectation.

How to chose brick and stone

Just a quick note about the brick. This is a nice brick. See how you have whole red brick and whole black brick. This brick has a checker board affect. This would not be a good brick to mix with stone, I am not saying it can't be done, but some changes would have to be made. I would use red or a dark buff mortar to tone down the contrast between the brick and mortar. The red mortar will help the black range to drag into the red brick. The stone would have to be a dark rich earth tone color or something in the rich earth tone green color would be interesting. But, anyway this is an example of brick range I would stay away from when talking about stone.

How to chose brick and stone

Here is a home built by LR Hill. Notice how the brick has an almost transparent color. No one brick has one solid color and all the colors drag into one another. This is actually the Rose Range Tudor. I manufactured many of these brick in my manufacturing past. I have stained many of the Rose Range Tudor, if was a tough brick to manufacture due to tight temp set points during the burning process. However, there are about 12 to 14 different colors in this brick. This is a good example of an Earth Tone category. This is one of the few red bricks that work with stone. But see how the two do not compete and how they compliment each other. The burgundy color pull the stone to the brick and the brick stone give a soft but bold contrast. Nice combination. Good job Larry.

Brick and Stone selections

Here we go on picking brick and stone selections. The brick is a nice choice without the stone. The stone is a nice choice without the brick. The two do not compliment each other at all. It's like wearing stripes with checks. I would put the brick in the Earth Tone category and the stone is of earth tone colors. Put them both together, it is too busy. It's like both of my boys fighting for their mother's attention. The stone should have been a lighter color, almost a cream color with slight color ranges. If the stone was the preferred choice, then a rich colored brick should have been chosen.

Brick and Stone Selections

I am back, the Brick and Stone Guy. It has been a while since my last post, But I am at it again. What I would like to spend time on with this post is brick and stone selection. Here is a prime example showing several mediums, as they say in the art world. You have Hardie siding, stone and brick. Also, the stone has what is called "spotters" in the mix. A mountain ledge profile stone with a fieldstone profile mixed in. I would guess about 90% was mountain ledge and 10% was spotters. When you mix stone with brick, PLEASE take time to get a good feel for the contrast between the two. Definitely when you add another major medium, Hardie Board, please get opinions. Only if you are a professional, and don't try this at home. To start the process of selection start with the dominate material. Example, what is the material that will have the strongest punch? The stone is definitely the dominate material on this home. I would choose the stone to start with. The second choice would be the brick and then the siding. How to choose the stone profile is a choice inside of the selection. Typically the size of the area would influence the profile. Keep in mind the style of home if that is a factor. If it was a Tuscany influence the stone should reflect the Tuscany look. Typically if the area is small a ledge profile should be used, if the area is very large, like a whole wall, a field stone profile could be used. Be careful not to use different stone profiles close in proximity of each other. If you do, try to match the colors, or have one stone in the front and the other in the back of the home. Enough about stone, I could talk all night. The second choice was the brick. So far I have only seen a limited amount of bricks that compliment stone. I will try to show good matches such as this picture along with bad ones. It's kinda like that bad boss, they show you how not to do it. I will do my next post showing a bad combination. I have given a category for these brick as "Earth Tone Range." A way to describe this type of brick could be described as the number of colors in the range, also the colors are dragged into each other. Typically, a red brick is not going to be a good selection. The Earth Tones will be in the greys, browns, and cream ranges. Also, the profile of the brick is tudored, usually a straight edge does not have character. With the two materials together ask yourself these questions, what contrast do I want between the stone and brick? Where is my eye being pulled towards? What is a focal point? Do I want my stone to blend in with the brick and vice verse? My last professional advise is, do not pick a brick just because you like it, and don't chose a stone just because you like it then expect the two will work together. Make sure it will be a great marriage between the two.