Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 12, 2009 3:55 am I am planning to build with sandstone look blocks and like most people I want my house to look pretty damn good. However I see a lot of houses which have unattractive expansion joints in the brickwork. I expect that they will be unavoidable but I was wondering is there any technique for making them less noticable or disguising them? I'm off to see the builder in a weeks time and will address the issue with him but I thought I'd do a bit of homework here first. Brian Re: Ugly brick expansion joints 2Apr 12, 2009 8:14 am How big are your sandstone look blocks. The bigger they are, the more noticeable the "vertical lines". The flexible filler in the expansion joints should be matched to your motar colour. I personally think we need a lot less expansion joints than we're asked to put it. Look at some old buildings, they will go for 20 metres without any expansion joint and there are no cracks. I've even seen a large new apartment complex without any expansion joints. Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Re: Ugly brick expansion joints 3Apr 12, 2009 9:48 am Casa2 How big are your sandstone look blocks. The bigger they are, the more noticeable the "vertical lines". The flexible filler in the expansion joints should be matched to your motar colour. I personally think we need a lot less expansion joints than we're asked to put it. Look at some old buildings, they will go for 20 metres without any expansion joint and there are no cracks. I've even seen a large new apartment complex without any expansion joints. The blocks are 190 x 390mm. The house will be about 20m across the front. I haven't had soil tests done yet but the builder says that land in my area is usually H class. I had been thinking the same thing about older buildings, they don't seem to have them. I haven't even noticed them until I decided to start building and was wondering if they were some sort of new phenomenon. Re: Ugly brick expansion joints 4Apr 12, 2009 10:16 am Those blocks are significantly larger (about 4 times the face area as a normal brick) so expansion joints will probably show up more. Would be interesting to see what expansion joints look like with such large blocks. If you follow the guidelines, I think you'll be up for 3 expansion joints along your 20 m wall. One thing to keep in mind is to locate some (if not all) behind downpipes. You may also want to put in some dummy downpipes to cover all the joints. If you look up the specification on your brick and get the em value, you might have a good argument to reduce expansion joints if the em is low (1.0 or less). (em is how much a brick will expand over 15 years measured in mm per metre. So a brick with an em of 1 will expand 1 mm over a 1 metre length, so 20 mm over the 20 metre length in question). It's particularly important to put in expansion joints in if your wall has changed in height along it's length. I managed to convince my structural engineer to put no expansion joints in a 12.6 m length of wall, but it took some convincing. My bricks have an em of 1.0, which helped. Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Re: Ugly brick expansion joints 5Apr 12, 2009 10:35 am Casa, thanks for the suggestions. There the answers I was looking for. The down pipe idea is a good one. Couldn't find the em rating on their website but I will give them a ring on Tuesday. There is some hope. I know the builder has used even bigger blocks on his own house (I haven't seen it). I'll have a good chat to him now I have some ammunition. at most it will have a short lintel which could be moved up just below the ceiling or even above. Above means you need to patch the cornice and might need to deal with… 2 61392 Hi All, First time poster. I was hoping to get some advice on villaboard installation within a bathroom. I have installed villaboard before, in a laundry. I think I did… 0 7482 2 8366 |