Hebel Vs. Bricks for new house in Sydney

Hello folks,

Just writing on this forum to get some insights to the hebel vs. brick discussion.
And to hear from real life examples of other people who have actually built a new home out of CSR hebel AAC material and how is like to live in one.

Not enough information is out there on the Internet to research this answer up.
From all the known sources. It mainly comes out of the www.hebel.com.au website which is the manufacturer and therefore seen as biased.

I’m currently in the situation for a knock down rebuild and will be making my selection choice with Metricon in the next three days and haven’t fully decided yet. They have a very good promotion at the moment.

Noise/acoustics was one of my main criteria’s for choosing the best appropriate building material to construct my new family 2 storey home. We currently live next to a main busy high traffic road with heavy trucks passing by. The house we have now in Sydney is an old Californian bungalow fully double brick home of the 1930’s/1940’s some noise by the vehicles can be heard day and night.

With double brick, the thermal mass works like this:
So cool in summer in the daytime but by night the bricks releases heat back internally and you feel like sleeping in an oven. And then total opposite in winter, when the house is too cold and takes too long to warm up, you end up putting on the heater for longer hours. This has been our experience, its good and bad.

Heat/temperature and energy efficiency is my next criteria. How comfortable is it to live in a house made out of hebel.

The bricks that has been assigned by the builder is from Australbricks everyday living standard range, this looks hollow with the 10 individual holes. Please see the photo below. The end result will be brick veneer with wall insulation also being used as well.
The other option is to use Hebel Powerpanel XL 75mm thick panels, with wall insulation batts and then render it. We have asked the builder, it ends up being cheaper and faster to build with hebel because some people upgrade their brick selection choice for a better end look so it costs more. Approximately double the price to be about $3 per brick (per 1000 quantity ordered)

So I’m after some constuctructive feedback, this would be most helpful.

Thanks

Hi bluebaowie,

I hope you are well.

As you mentioned, there are some big upsides to using brick as they have excellent thermal properties. However, they will also play a big role in reducing some of the noise you also mentioned.

Below are a couple of links to help you find your way. If in the end, you have more questions or choose to move ahead with bricks, our friendly Team at PGH would love to help you.

http://www.thinkbrick.com.au/facts-about-brick

http://www.pghbricks.com.au/bricks/benefits-of-brick

Regards,
David PGH Bricks and Pavers

Hey Dave
Here's are the issues as I See them
1.All the details are up on the internet and generally can be found within several clicks
2.There's also a lot of Spin, Fluff and Marketing Bulldust out there beforehand as well
So you can understand all the confusion
3.Here's a hint people trust advice from engineers because they offer data and proofs
They don't trust marketing spin..Trusted Professional Survey
Thanks for the links .. but I doubt people would read them..they would prefer to ask
specific questions ie value in $3/brick?
Bluebaowie Some builders will mark up variations considerably they don't necessarily pay any more to the trade and suppliers, but you should know what constitutes a fair price...boom times are over..

Hi StructuralBIMGuy,

Thanks for bringing these points up. There was no intent for marketing spin here, the links and the content they lead to are merely in a short digestible format for people to get a top line view from.

If you or anyone else would like, we have a 75-page technical document which will give you all the detail you need and more. This has been put together with reference to the National construction code and AS 3700 Masonry Structures Standards.

Please see section 1.3 for fire and acoustic properties.

Link to download below:

http://www.pghbricks.com.au/product-info/downloads

We also have BIM files for all of our brick products and ranges which have been built in conjunction with UNIFI Labs, a leader in this space, for you to plan with. Taking from your profile name I thought you might be interested in this too.

All the best,
Dave - PGH Bricks and Pavers

Thanks for the links, I have all the Australian Standards and I turned them into BIM Algorithms. As for Jpeg Brick Images for Architectural Coloured Renderings that ship has long sailed 10 years ago , my focus has now turned to the presentation of INFORMATION & PROOFS.hth

Hi,

Like you, we concidered every option, pros and cons for both hebel and brick. Whilst both are similar, if your after the modern look, hebel has it all over bricks.

As render is an applied product, it’s important to concider what it’s being applied to.

Bricks require bricklayers, and when bricklayers lay commons suitable for render, the mindset is it will be covered, therefore the laying lacks skill and the bricks are slapped into place knowing render will cover them.

Hebel, is installed by professionals, knowing the importance of straight and plumb walls, suitable for render.

After months of deciding, we used the steel frame, hebel walls, and render, and honesty it looks great.

We used the Stoddarts system.

Here’s a video so you can see how good it goes together. (Not our house being built, our builder is slow, however using Stoddarts we achieved the quality and the look we where after).

https://vimeo.com/126077254

Cheers

CustomHome42
The internet is saturated with marketing and spin Videos and unfortunately builders don't even rank on trusted professions list above.. (That is something they will need to address themselves) As an engineer I advocate prefab, innovation, faster builds at lower costs,etc.) But you can also achieve that with Timber without Thermal Expansion being a problem
hth

hello everyone, can anyone please share an objective opinion on this? I'm also torn between hebel and bricks. bluebaowie, di you end up deciding what to choose?
my builder is. pitching hebel to me at no extra cost, with all the upside its hard to resist. i just want to make sure i mke due diligence before going to hebel.

Hebel requires acrylic render, so add up $60-$75 per sq m + GST to your calcs. When not rendered properly, cracks are probable.

Bricklayers are expensive in Sydney, some of them charge up to $3 per brick those days, but generally expect to pay $1.7-$2 + GST for your bricklaying.

Acoustically, brick will perform a bit better as it is more solid in comparison to AAC (AAC has air cavities inside and is narrower - 75 mm vs 110 mm).

Main sound bottleneck will be still your windows, so consider double or tripple glazing if you want to see improvements there. Most of the windows, even double glazed, provide less than 40 Rw of acoustic filtering. So in most cases, both Hebel and brick will perform pretty much at the same level.

Hebel performs a bit better thermally though, but just a bit and the difference can be easily compensated with your insulation choice.

Double brick with proper insulation in between will perform MUCH better than Hebel. Properly insulated thermal mass provides low variations between the temperature after your lag, e.g. yes, it gets a bit hotter in the evening, but only like 3-4 degrees difference to morning temperature during 40+ degree days. So you just ran your AC for couple of hours before going to bed or even just ventilate by opening up your windows at night. Only few people insulate double brick properly those days (with rigid panels of high value between the bricks) as in most cases insulation requires increasing a cavity size, i.e. wall thickness.

Insulated double brick is obviously the best of two worlds, but comes at a premium (stronger footings, wall chasing for services, gyprock to brick, etc.). Consider poly ICF or Durisol ICF as alternative and cheaper option (require same footings as brick veneer and costs are pretty much comparable). All those are structural and load bearing, so you save on frames. You can learn more about Durisol material here: https://www.facebook.com/DurisolAustralia/. It is used a lot in Canada and States and provides superior thermal and vapour permeability performance + thermal mass. ICF walls are also up to 7 times stronger than double brick walls.

The second best option to consider is reverse brick veneer. It also comes at a premium and you would need to do chasing for services and use weatherboard or rendered rigid insulation for externals.

Hope it helps.

Search Cracking->
Autoclaved aerated concrete Blocks, i.e.
BGC Thermalite Blocks (perth)
Builders get kickbacks & rebates to promote Building Materials
Goodluck

Render has no Structural capacity whatsoever, nor is it considered in any of the structural code calculations.

It can crack when Hebel joints under the render expand or contract as there is no mortar used to connect Hebel panels together.

hi, hope your built has been good, for hebel build people say the skill of installation helps avoid cracks later on, would you mind sharing details of your hebel installer please, we are considering hebel...in sydney

Check out the below Instagram profile “builderswife” they built a gorgeous house using hebel. She might shed some light on your questions/concerns