Replies

1. 
   Ronbaby | Sep 17, 2004 03:34am | #1

   I to am from upstate J, and have come across a few resorations with brick in the walls. I was always told it was used for its insulating factor. Not sure of its true, but hope someone else chimes in.

2. 
   DLightbourn | Sep 17, 2004 04:09am | #2

   "We don't need no education
   We don't need no thought control
   No dark sarcasm in the classroom
   Teachers leave them kids alone
   Hey teacher leave them kids alone
   All in all it's just another brick in the wall
   All in all you're just another brick in the wall "

   Sorry, I just could not resist!

   Dennis

3. 
   Piffin | Sep 17, 2004 04:29am | #3

   Never seen the bricks but buttering with mortar or plaster in inside of sheathing is something I often see to prevent air infiltration. It helped prevent drafting inside the wall and that control of the convection currents slowed heat loss. more common at sill level but sometimes they plastered it al the way to top of wall. better homes had more, rural folk homes had less or none

   Adding bricks would have increased thermal massing.

    

    

   Welcome to the
   Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
    where ...
   Excellence is its own reward!

4. 
   GreekRevivalGuy | Sep 17, 2004 05:06am | #4

   I believe that was fairly common ... I've seen quite a few examples.  I'm sure the reasons were those already mentioned.  Often they used fired bricks ... but "sammies" (salmon-colored) ... ones that didn't get fired hot enough to be hard bricks.  If yours disintegrate when wet, they are, as you say, unfired (adobe).  There are quite a few upstate NY house made of adobe, believe it or not.  Mid-1800s.  Lime plaster on the exterior kept the walls intact.  There are also rammed-earth homes from that time period in upstate.  There was a lot of experimentation going on.

   The brick infill technique, of course, goes back to medieval Europe where they would build post-and-beam structures with masonry inbetween ... (think "Tudor-style").

   My 1830s house in Upstate has solid wood walls ... made from stacked 1-inch-thick planks, laid up like lincoln logs.  Even the interior walls are constructed that way.  Clapboards are nailed onto the exterior of the planks, and plaster is applied directly to the interior (no lath).  This technique was more common than you might expect ... with examples throughout the northeast and Canada.  It avoided some of the complex joinery of the day ... and made it possible for a single laborer to construct the house, I suppose.  And it offers some insulation and reduces air infiltration.  But, wow, what a lot of sawing, what a lot of lumber ... and what a lot of nails!

   Somewhere at Cornell, there's a research paper written on the subject of plank-on-plank construction.  Been meaning to go look it up.

   Allen

5. 
   RickD | Sep 17, 2004 05:50am | #5

   What others have said, plus this:  fireproofing.  If I remember right, this was one of Ben Franklin's ideas; he was a pioneer in fireproofing buildings, and he realized that bays between studs served as chimneys during fires.  One of his techniques for minimizing this effect was to brick in the bays around the sills of the house, to prevent air from below feeding a fire, and to help prevent fire traveling from floor to floor. 

1. 
   GreekRevivalGuy | Sep 17, 2004 06:15am | #6

   Good point.  A couple weeks ago I inadvertantly started a fire behind the clapboards in my house while stripping paint with a propane torch.  I got a little careless ... walked away for 10 minutes, then found the front parlor filled with smoke.  I was VERY GLAD my walls are SOLID wood ... the fire did not spread very far.  If those were empty bays in a studded wall ... hoo boy ... I don't want to even imagine.

   Anyway, I learned my lesson ... and now only use the torch to strip trim I've temporarily removed from the house.

   Allen

2. 
   JCarroll38 | Sep 17, 2004 02:24pm | #7

   I don't think this building technique originated with Ben Franklin. Thomas Jefferson filled the voids between the timbers of his floors at Monticello with "nogging". "During restoration of the house in the 1950s, the wooden floors were pulled up to reveal more than one hundred tons of nogging--brick, mud and straw packed between the floor joists as fireproofing, ratproofing and insulation" -- from the book Jefferson and Monticello by Jack McLaughlin. The walls of Monticello were 2-ft. thick and built of bricks.

1. 
   RickD | Sep 17, 2004 05:39pm | #10

   I am by no means a Franklin expert, but a little web search shows that Franklin founded the Union Fire Company in Philadelphia in 1736, 7 years before Jefferson was born, and that he published on fireproofing buildings.  The use of plaster lath between floors as fireproofing was Franklin's idea http://www.ushistory.org/carpentershall/building/smith.htm

   My bet is that Jefferson learned from and expanded Franklin's work- Maybe some scholar or fire expert could weigh in-

1. 
   JCarroll38 | Sep 17, 2004 06:27pm | #11

   Both Franklin and Jefferson were concerned about fire prevention. As a young man, Jefferson's ancestral home, Shadwell, burned to the ground. In the fire, his library, one of the most extensive collections in America, was destroyed. It is not unreasonable to assume that Jefferson read what Franklin, who was a full generation older than Jefferson, had to say about fire prevention. However, I think it is a stretch to say that Franklin's recommendations about fireproofing a house were original to him. The first modern building code was enacted after the Great Fire of London (1666) and nogging had been used as infill for timber-framed houses for centuries. Franklin organized the first public library, the first fire company and the first public postal service in the English colonies. But he didn't invent any of these.

1. 
   RickD | Sep 17, 2004 10:44pm | #13

   well, I never said invented, but I knew there was a reason why I remembered Ben here at Taunton http://www.codecheck.com/pg30whyben.html

2. 
   seeyou | Sep 17, 2004 08:24pm | #12

   I've seen similar construction (the bricks were usually laid with mud - dirt and water) and I've heard it called "nogging".

6. 
   frank547 | Sep 17, 2004 03:30pm | #8

   I am also upstate - in the albany area. have the same thing on a 1860ish house i am working wiht. The BI said that it was for insulation.

   good luck.

7. 
   SteveInCleveland | Sep 17, 2004 03:59pm | #9

   We'll.........

   I'll huff, and I'll puff, and blow your house down.

   signed,

      The Big Bad Wolf

   "Those who are citizens of God's kingdom are best equipped to be citizens of the kingdom of man"  -- St. Augustine