Will there be a place for traditional brick and block buildings in the fast changing construction industry? And how will traditional methods compare on sustainability? Richard Stirling explores.

IT SEEMS good old brick and block has been under siege from any new building method and innovative timber technique you could name.

Producers of Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) and lightweight steel frame solutions are quick to distance themselves from clunky old building methods like bricklaying and view such artisan techniques as expensive and an unnecessary strain on resources. Yet traditional building methods inspire confidence in consumers.

People talk about investing in “bricks and mortar” as a sure-fire way to keep their money safe and a steady, reliable, person is a “brick”. Perhaps brick and block have come under fire as the innovators of offsite construction methods look to test themselves against what they see is the standard building technique.

Brick Development Association (BDA) director Michael Driver admits that this might be the case. “At the moment brick and block are the Aunt Sally of construction materials because they’re the norm,” he says, “and people always compare themselves to that.”

However, Driver says, this traditional building method produces a flexibility of design to ensure that when a building goes up it can stay up for a long time and also suits any demands of energy efficiency and recycling that planners might want to put on it.

A reliable material
Driver says brick has an inherent quality that puts people at their ease. “People understand and enjoy brick,” he says. “They like the parity of it and the human scale. They are instantly familiar with it and feel at home, whether it is a tight modern skin or an external covering.
“It’s very notable, for example, when people build with modular bricks or use different proportions people say it looks strange. There is a thing about the dimensions and shape of a brick that strikes a chord with people.”

Driver says brick buildings respond particularly well to the ageing process and are recyclable when they reach the ends of their lives.

“The ageing process is a positive thing,” he says. “It requires very little maintenance and, once it’s there, it’s there for a long time. Once the building’s reached the end of its life you can either reuse the brick or use it as secondary material such as shale in tennis courts or as filler material.”

Indeed, he adds, recovered bricks are commanding higher prices than new ones because of this ageing process.

Flexibility and recyclability
Bricks were the original modular construction product. Their uniformity makes brick buildings easy to take apart and to reuse the bricks.

“When you’re reusing bricks you’re really recycling the building because it is made up of this wonderful material that’s easy to manipulate,” says Driver. “The building has a totally new life.”

However, he warns against sprucing up old buildings by sandblasting, which pits the surface of the brick. “If you need to clean a building up there are vortex cleaners that are based on sandblasting,” Driver says.

“Quite often what’s needed is just a bit of remedial work and pointing.”

Once the building is in use, he adds, brick structures produce a flexibility that buildings produced offsite have difficulty achieving.

“The great thing with brick and block is you have got a material that people understand and can use,” Driver says. “If you knock a hole through a wall in a Georgian terrace there’s no great drama.
“If a building is going to last 120 years, its bathroom will have changed six times during that time. If you’re going to build in a bathroom pod, you’re not going to have made the best of it. This is where masonry benefits the design of a building, as you can move things around as the needs of the building changes.”

Whole life costings
The backers of timber construction products bang their drum that theirs is the most sustainable material. However, says Driver, the brick industry has a good case for claiming its own green credentials from the clay production through the whole life of a brick.

“The product itself is sustainable; it comes from a very, very extensive natural resource,” he says. “Anything we dig out of the ground we use and we’re not digging a lot out compared with other industries. The clay reserves are not going to run out; they’re very ample.”

He says brick buildings use very little energy over their lifetimes. The BDA reckons the CO2 emissions for every square metre of brickwork a year over a 120-year lifespan works out at 0.000232 tonnes of CO2/m2/year.

Not surprisingly, Driver uses the argument of thermal mass in defence of brick buildings. He says this is critical when future proofing buildings against climate change.

“We can now say with confidence that our temperatures are going to raise,” Driver says. “In 20 years, lightweight frames are going to be struggling and are going to be requiring extra air conditioning. If you look at Greece, the country has a problem with electricity supply, not in the winter, but in the summer when they use a lot of air conditioning. If we’re not careful, we are going to be running up against the same problem in the future.”

Built to last
The BDA has lobbied hard to get the Building Research Establishment (BRE) to change its view that energy efficiency should be measured against a 60-year lifespan of a building.

“There has been a big shift in the BRE’s thinking,” Driver says. “Up to the last edition of the Green Guide, everything was measured to a 60-year lifespan, which was absurd. They’re now saying at the end of that 60years they will give a 60-plus award. We haven’t seen the results of the Green Guide, but everybody’s waiting for them with baited breath. It’s going to be fundamental to the way things are built.”

The future is carved in stone
So what is the supply chain doing to promote brick and block against young contenders like SIPs or steel frame? Perhaps innovation and integration in the supply chain might give brick suppliers the upper hand when contractors are costing up jobs.

Hanson made an interesting move when it bought Irvine Whitlock, the biggest brickwork subcontractor in the UK as it gave the company an integrated supply chain and now it can sell brickwork by the square metre it lays.

Driver says this may change the way bricks are procured. “What we have been doing as an industry is selling bricks by the thousand, but if I sell them by the square metre I can charge £15 to £16 instead of hundreds of pounds,” he says. “Ibstock will quote by the square metre they deliver now. Once we’re getting those prices and get them in the public domain and compare that with other methods of construction, we will be in a stronger position. They charge by the square metre for glazing or aluminium panels after all.”

How well the supply chain performs against other materials will be up to individual companies, but what’s important is that the material is still very much a favourite with planners and housebuyers alike. There’s something about the longevity of brick buildings that gives them piece of mind.

However, Driver says, this is not to say the material won’t learn from modern factory conditions.

“There are no doubts that there are improvements that can be made to traditional construction,” he says. “It’s what I call ‘rationalised masonry construction’. By adjusting things within the whole process you can use brick and block more efficiently.”