So, you have one massive brick, at least 5 bricks high and 5 wide, a 25-in-1 brick. Although it looks like it's made of regular bricks and mortar. The advantage being that it's 25x easier to build a wall compared to traditional bricks, more insulating (sound and heat preferentially seep through mortar, and the mortar is fake here....), faster, cheaper (...in terms of social consequences.... being 25x heavier they'd be useless as riot missiles, being 5 bricks high, too high for car-wheel stealing, being large, they'd be unwieldy in vigilante street-castrations). To make them adaptable, the edges would be staggered, just like a regular wall so that corners and windows could be accommodated by using regular bricks as fill-ins.
Houses would be faster, cheaper and easier to build... car crime and riots would be down. Win Win.-- bs0u0155, Dec 02 2011 Paving version http://www.lonstone.../regency_brick.html [pocmloc, Dec 02 2011] duplo bricks-- po, Dec 02 2011 but then there's the mortar situation between the 25x and the 1x. will it match? will you have to fill it in just for looks? will it crack along those edges for being such differently sized/hardness areas? not so simple..
they do make brick veneer, comes in sheets that looks like brick lay and you have to just fill in all the mortar.-- AutoMcDonough, Dec 02 2011 These would look lousy, because the joints between them wouldn't look the same as the fake joints. Fake brick paving looks lousy for the same reason.
Breezeblocks are probably about as big as is practical for general building, and are equivalent to maybe a 2 x 4 x1 slab of brick in size.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 02 2011 I hesitate to introduce logic to the Halfbakery, but . . . if the idea is to make them useless as riot missiles, yet regular bricks are still used to fill around windows and whatnon, wouldn't anyone interested in acquiring a riot missle simply buy one of the filling-in-around- windows-sized bricks instead?-- gisho, Dec 02 2011 //riots would be down.// Similar in effect to the sustitution of macadam for cobblestone paving.-- mouseposture, Dec 03 2011 I admit that I'm not well up on modern day hooliganism, but is there anyone out there who thinks "I'd really like to go rioting, but I can't be arsed to bring my own rocks."?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 03 2011 Where are you going to carry those rocks? Most rioters are just in Speedos.
No, the problem with this idea is that 5 x 5 is still sort of a wussy little thing. 25 x 25 x 25 - now that's a brick! Throw _this_ thru the taco shop window, you speedo wearing chump!-- bungston, Dec 03 2011 Why bricks all of a sudden?-- Alterother, Dec 03 2011 The consistency of the mortar would have to be altered in order to prevent sagging from the extra weight of each layer. My understanding of this subject is limited, but I've been told that mortars are composed of strict ratios of ingredients in order to support a certain amount of weight during a very specific setting period while still producing a strong, resilient bond that won't crack or flake. Messing with the formula would complicate things, methinks.
Query aside: is carrying bricks by hod still common practice? I thought modern masons used pallet-loaders and electric hoists.-- Alterother, Dec 03 2011 How much weight the human body can move over time is nearly unbelievable. When I was working at a fab shop several years ago, I once spent two days fabbing a large number of identical parts for an oil rig. Each weighed about 70lbs. I had a system worked out, because being a good fabricator isn't just about geometry and welding, it's also about economy of motion. I would take the raw materials off of a cart, prep them on a bench, place them into a jig on the same bench, weld them, and then place the finished piece on another cart. At the end of two 12-hour shifts, I calculated that I had single-handedly moved almost 51,000 lbs of steel twelve feet, 70 lbs at a time, in roughly two-minute intervals.-- Alterother, Dec 04 2011 //At the end of two 12-hour shifts, I calculated// Says a lot about you.-- mouseposture, Dec 04 2011 It does? What exactly does it say?-- Alterother, Dec 04 2011 That the two 12-hour stints didn't blunt either your curiosity, or your -- I dunno what to call it: determination to pursue the answer to a question, once asked.
After "After two 12 hour shifts I" one expects something like "rested," "slept like a log" "got drunk." "calculated" seemed mildly incongruous.-- mouseposture, Dec 04 2011 Oh, I did those things too. It's just that my brain does some of its best work while my hands are busy doing other things (and vice-versa). That's why I'm a welder and a writer, not just one or the other.-- Alterother, Dec 04 2011 random, halfbakery