The Sustainability of Brick
Are you looking for a new home or considering an extensive remodel? A few questions are probably swirling through your mind: What’s affordable? What’s the most durable option? What will grow in value as time passes?
Big decisions usually don’t come with easy answers and almost always involve compromise. That’s not the case when you build with brick. This environmentally friendly and robust building material checks all the right boxes, leaving you with only one more question: When does the construction project begin?
Photo by Max Sandelin
Brick Is Strong
In its history of over 5,000 years, brick has been used by the ancient Egyptians, Romans, and the people of the Indus Valley civilization. The beauty of brick is that its reliability has only increased over the years.
Formed in flames, brick has the innate ability to guard against fire. In fact, brick has an impressive 1-hour fire-resistance rating. It’s also strong enough to stand its ground against a huff and a puff of high winds that blow debris everywhere. Brick’s integrity isn’t weakened by moisture, so it won’t rot or become infested with termites. And there’s a reason why the saying “running into a brick wall” exists. Brick doesn’t budge or dent upon impact.
Brick Is Smart
Brick can stand up to Mother Nature’s tests. Now what does it cost? It’s true that the price tag is higher at first than other materials, but it’s an investment. After you make that initial purchase, you’ll pay less on many other bills.
Most brick houses have lower insurance cost because of the superiority of brick. You won’t need to spend money on repairs for wear-and-tear or sudden surprises unless you live in a neighborhood where wrecking balls fly around aimlessly. Brick is a building material that has exceptional “thermal mass” properties. Thermal mass is the ability of a heavy, dense material to store heat and then slowly release it. For you, this means that during the summer months, your brick home stays cool during the hottest part of the day. During the winter, brick walls store your home’s heat and radiate it back to you. As a result of their high thermal mass, bricks provide exceptional insulating properties to homes, reducing power consumption and drastically reducing your carbon footprint.
Finally, the return on investment is higher than if you were to build with other materials. In this case, moving out of your brick home could be profitable for you, even if you’d like to stay forever. When compared to vinyl homes, brick gains value at an average of about 9.5% and sells for at least 6% more.
Brick Is Sustainable
Clay is one of the most abundant natural resources on Earth, and therefore using it to make brick is very sustainable. At Cherokee Brick, the manufacturing kilns run on natural and methane gas, and the production process never wastes any leftover clay. Reclaimed, or recycled, brick is used for landscaping and building sub-bases.
Homes built with brick are made to last. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, brick has a lifespan of 100 years. That’s a solid lifetime for most people, and many buildings still standing today prove that brick endures much longer and better than other building materials.
And More…
Brick is natural and plentiful. Cherokee bricks are made from clay and shale, which are natural resources found in abundance in Georgia and Mississippi. Because they are wrought directly from the Earth, bricks are completely inert and endlessly recyclable. This reduces the need for extraction of raw materials and the amount of material that goes to landfills.
Cherokee Brick’s brickyards represent a milestone in modern efficiency, as we can produce an incredible amount of top-quality brick without placing undue strain on our environment. Each of our production facilities is strategically located to allow for onsite sourcing of raw materials, greatly reducing transportation emissions. The fires of our kilns are fueled by methane gas and sawdust from nearby landfills and furniture manufacturers, while all byproducts of our production process are recycled and re-purposed, assuring that nothing goes to waste.
The bottom line is that brick is the most sustainable green building material made!
Given the significant buildings have on energy consumption, brick should be part of a comprehensive green strategy because today’s brick includes:
Countless Recycling Options
Brick can be salvaged, crushed brick for sub-base materials, and chipped brick for permanent landscaping mulch.
Low Embodied Energy to Manufacture Brick
With clay brick’s renowned longevity, no additional energy will be needed to make a replacement brick for many decades. In fact, brick is one of the few materials that building codes allow to be reused in a building application when it meets the ASTM standard for clay brick.
Minimal Waste
Virtually all of the mined clay is used in the manufacturing process, making the recycling and waste containment unequaled by any other building material.
Brick is the first masonry material that can attain a “Certificate of Environmental Claims” from a third-party source
The National Brick Research Center, an organization of the College of Engineering and Science at Clemson University, has developed a standard to verify the amount of recycled content in brick, the utilization of renewable energy in the firing process, and the reduction in the number of resources used to manufacture brick.
For more information on how to be eco-friendly, visit www.CADdetails.com.
Author : Carmella Douglas
