[Greenbuilding] Circa 1766 (terra cotta) roof shingles

[RT]

"On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 07:47:24 -0400, Bobby Jay!
<futureship0000 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> The bricks I touched on these walls
> Did not look like clay. They looked
> Like cut stone.
>
> What are your thoughts on building
> In my area with these materials ?
>
> Half-timbers with brick infill, stone
> Foundation, built into the earth on
> The first floor.


I haven't looked at any images of the half-timbered buildings or the ones
that look like cut stone but assuming that the masonry units are
brick-sized, I doubt very much that they'd be cut stone.

It's a lot of work cutting stone and even though labour was cheap in those
days, I doubt that they'd squander so much labour to cut brick-sized
stones, especially if granite is the local material. They'd likely cut the
stones suitcase-sized or larger.

About the brick-infill between the timbers :

When I was about 19, I had a fondness for handmade rustic stuff (in later
years would use the word "rustic" as a euphemism for "crude") and there
were a charming series of little booklets (this was back in the Olde Days
when books were made of paper) written by a fellow by the name of Eric
Sloane which described in words and sketches all manner of things rustic
and handmade from 18th C America.

I think that I have a vague memory of Mr. Sloane talking about
brick-infilled half-timber structures (perhaps the very same of which Jake
speaks today) and I seem to recall something about the builders using the
brick for infill simply because it was a convenient place to dispose of
their garbage bricks. Wattle & daub would have been the traditional infill
but that'd be more labour-intensive than just chucking junk bricks and
mortar into the space.

Given that fired clay brick is one of the highest embodied-energy, common
building materials, I don't think that I'd be using it as junk infill on a
21st C building aspiring to be Green unless of course they were salvaged
junk brick that's no good for anything else.

Then there's the Green appropriateness of making a building with solid
masonry walls in energy-conscious 2013 because it'd likely be an air-leaky
energy sieve. One could of course make it two brick veneers with an
insulated core between but at an incremental cost in 21st C labour. But
then there'd be all those joints between the brick and timbers to
air-seal. And that's not to mention the questionable practise of having
masonry tight-up against timbers that are exposed to the elements.

For the half-timber portion : I suspect that in most places these days,
local residents wouldn't be too happy about some builder cutting down
their massive White Oaks or Black Locusts just so that he could get
suitable timbers to provide a historical pastiche on some new homes.

Out of curiosity I just Googled "materials 18th C Moravian homes
Winston-Salem" and one of the first hits was

"Polly M. Rettig and Horace J. Sheely, Jr. (June 15, 1976). National
Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Old Salem Historic
District"

... and the PDF document provides individual commentaries on most (all ?)
of the buildings in that area.
In the quick scan that I took, I didn't see any mention of cut stone for
any of the buildings but clay brick was mentioned for most.

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom					AOD257
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

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