Clay hollow Bricks

[kraghum]

I am about to start construction of my house, while looking at new happening in brick industry. i read about winer berger and i saw YouTube Videos where they build the whole building using Glue and Clay hollow bricks.

Spoke to wiener berger representative in Blr. here what they offer
Bricks in size of 4, 6 and 8 inch (this replace 9 redbrick), and we can use their new "Dry Fix" solution which cost 1500Rs and can glue 90 bricks. No more cement/Sand/curing using water, No mixing. he suggested me to look at apartment behind Kalyan Nagar busstand who are using this (earlier they were using cement/sand)

Advantages
- Heat insulation
- Less cost
- If we get good flat vertical wall, we can finish whole wall in Putty instead of plastering
- whole thing will cure in 20 minutes
- If i choose to build whole house in this method they will allot a person who will visit our site almost everyday to oversee the brickwork
- Searched in net and found they are already popular in Europe
http://www.wienerberger.in/news/present ... ystem.html

But he suggested that these bricks work well if the their is Column structure, but for G+1 we can use directly

Any thoughts on this?, plan to discuss with my architect as we are final stage of confirming concept drawings

Please share your views

Regards
Raghu

[vsathishmybda]

Hi,

Saw this post(http://www.commonfloor.com/forum/4ec4fe ... nstruction) about porotherm bricks.

Also you can the forum links :

http://www.mybdasites.com/viewtopic.php ... =porotherm
http://www.mybdasites.com/viewtopic.php ... herm#p7820

Experts and users of porotherm bricks of this forum can comment on this.

BR,
Sathish V

[tvsh]

I have used porotherm bricks and it is a very good building material. I have done internal plastering and painted the bricks on the outside.Let me know if you have any specific questions about porotherm.

[aries31]

Hi tvsh,

Some questions:
- cost comparison vs regular bricks
- how many years since you completed your construction?
- Is it suitable for G+1 construction? Is a framed structure "must-have"?

The weinerberger product details mentions that it is for non-loadbearing walls only. hence ruling out our simple, low cost abodes

[tvsh]

Cost:

Material cost is lower, labor cost is higher, especially if you want to leave the bricks exposed. Labor has to make sure the brickwork looks pretty, hence will have to tie a thread and make sure the cement mortar is even between the bricks.

We completed our house in Oct 2011. So it has been about 15 months.

According to the CPRI compressive strength reports for porotherm brick, it is deem safe for G+1. Porotherm also mentions that it is safe for G+1. My house has longer spans hence I do employ semi-pillared construction. the structural elements were the same for normal brick work. I have planned only for G+1 and have no plans of constructing more than G+1. No fan of constructing more floors for rental income.

What is it that is driving you towards Porotherm?

In my case it was.
1. looks - I like natural brick & tiled roof, look on buildings
2. Environmentally better than regular bricks - Since they use 20% fly ash and are hollow, they use less top soil, which is precious.
3. Cooler buildings due to hollow bricks.
4. The redbricks do not have consistency. The bricks at the bottom are burnt more, while those at the top are burnt less. So the strenght of the brick varies in a given lot, while these bricks are produced using modern machines, have consistency. So each brick has more or less the same physical properties.

[kraghum]

I have meeting with my architect today, and plan to discuss with her about it, but she did mentioned they wanted to sue this bricks for their office but stopped due to various reason which i want to hear and post it here.

@tvsh,
-I hear if the walls are constructed with care, we can just use putty without need of plastering?, did you tried it in your house
- Did you happen to calculate any cost saving, if you plaster the walls
- your comments about DRYFIX product? , did you happen to consider this for your house?

Raghu

[tvsh]

In my case, the engineer was dead against using these. His reluctance to use it was due to "fear of unknown" and "fear of less profits.
I had to fight with him to use it, hence did not want to experiment too much with dryfix and using just putty on the inside. I have used traditional cement mortor (1:4) for the joints and 1:6 ratio for inside plastering.I was using item rate contract and did save money I would have spent on plastering the external walls.

[kpb2308]

How about electrical connections on these walls. Is it possible to pass concealed wiring and have points on these walls since they are hollow, and will be exposed.

[Prasad.Krishnan]

How about electrical connections on these walls. Is it possible to pass concealed wiring and have points on these walls since they are hollow, and will be exposed.

Adding to the question, can we drill nails and holes in the wall if it's made of porotherm bricks?

[tvsh]

How about electrical connections on these walls. Is it possible to pass concealed wiring and have points on these walls since they are hollow, and will be exposed.

Adding to the question, can we drill nails and holes in the wall if it's made of porotherm bricks?

With exposed walls, it will be hard to have concealed wiring . However you can have a plasterd wall on the inside and leave the external side unplastered. Drilling nails is possible, you can have the walls in the joints of the mortar and on a plastered wall, it is similar to any other walls