Solid Attached Pier and One brick Wall in Flemish Garden Wall CORE

Bond. 1 of 3

English and Flemish garden wall bonds were designed to allow a fair face to be achieved on both sides of a one brick wall.

As the bond is made up of far more stretcher faces than headers, savings can be made on face bricks.

With a greater number of internal straight joints occurring, the bonds do not contain the same strength as full English and Flemish bonds.

The bond consists of one course of headers of three courses of stretchers.

As the English bond, a queen closer is used to maintain ¼ bond in the header course.

This consists of three stretchers to one header in the same course. The header should be positioned centrally above the middle stretcher.

The important point to remember with this bond is that the quoin starts with two stretchers. This ensures that the header is positioned over the central stretcher.

The internal straight joints are reduced in this bond making it relatively stronger than English Garden Wall bond.

Solid free standing piers are capable of transferring considerable compressive loads through their structure down to its foundations.

If a side load is placed on the pier it creates a totally different set of stresses which cannot be carried by the brickwork.

Brickwork is strong in compression but extremely weak in tension.

Free standing piers can be strengthened by the introduction of a reinforced concrete core.

The brickwork is constructed as a hollow pier, so allowing for additional strength to be provided by filing the central core with the reinforced concrete.

The reinforcement must be cast into the concrete foundation and the pier built around it.

The concrete is positioned and compacted once the mortar joints in the brickwork have fully hardened.

Care must be taken to ensure the core is kept free of mortar droppings and brick waste during the construction of the brickwork.

It is as important to protect the top of free standing wall or pier from moisture penetration as it is to provide a DPC at ground level within a dwelling.

The most effective way is to cap the wall or pier with an overhanging concrete coping.

Flexible DPC should be provided below the coping. It should be sandwiched between mortar beds.

When cross joints are applied to the end of concrete copings it is vital that the dip groove runs across the joint thickness. If this is not done, moisture will run back onto face of wall where lime staining will occur.

Protection can be provided using brick on edge coping and tile creasings. These are not as effective as the concrete coping as the number of cross joints increases the possibility of water penetration.

Bricks should be of class ‘A’ or ‘B’ engineering quality, bedded in a strong sand cement mix.

Walls can be capped with a brick – on - edge without the tiled creasing or over sailing course.

This method is not satisfactory as it allows the water to penetrate the top surface and to run down the face of the wall.