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Old 05-01-2021, 11:00 AM
Doug Doug is offline
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Question bricks

Pictured below is a brick courthouse building built around 1870 to replace a log courthouse building burned in the Civil War in Logan County, WV. This was in a very remote area at that time and there were perhaps less than a dozen houses in that town at that time, none of brick.

It took about 2 years to build the courthouse and the bricks were made on site by the builder that was a local entity. Note that the picture shows a man walking at the right-side corner of the building. Assuming that he is about 5 ˝ feet tall, it appears the two-story building is about 40ftx40ft square and about 30 feet tall. This leads me to speculate about some of the construction details such as:
How thick would the lower floor walls have been? Single brick width? Double brick width?
Would the upper floor walls be the same thickness as the lower floor walls?

I don’t know the dimensions of the building. It appears the building is symmetric with windows and doors the same on opposite sides. It appears the window lintels have 17 or so bricks vertical indicating the windows are about 4 ft wide and about 8 ft or so tall.

There are 8 chimneys that extend several feet past the top of the walls.
Using my assumed dimensions, about how many bricks (within 10,000 or so) would have been used in this building?
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Old 05-01-2021, 11:22 AM
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I think that may be a boy at the right, so he may be shorter than that. The walls were probably at least double brick width, with maybe a cavity in between the inner and outer layers. By the time you add lath and plaster to the inside they were probably a foot thick total. The stair step heights were probably 7 or 8 inches high, so you could use that for scaling the picture.

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Old 05-01-2021, 11:45 AM
66sprint6 66sprint6 is offline
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I agree with Stuart, since every house that I've owned including the current one, is a solid brick house. There's an outside wythe (a wythe is a single course, or thickness of brick), and an inside wythe. There is a gap between the two wythes. We found when coring for a new hood fan exhaust that the total thickness of the outside wall was about a foot.
I have to add, though, that I've worked on old buildings that had three wythes of brick. There were two outside wythes that were tied together by an intermittent brick that was turned 90 degrees to tie them together. I believe that they call that a common bond.

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Old 05-01-2021, 12:57 PM
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I agree with the above mentioned. That man, or boy, isn’t right at the corner of the building. He looks like he’s about 30’ away from it, for reference. I think those windows are closer to 6’ tall.

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Old 05-01-2021, 01:14 PM
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Standard structural brick walls are either two layers thick, or two layers thick with a rubble and mortar layer between them. That would be for a building about three stories high, no idea how they would be built for taller buildings.
Single layer brick must have a supporting wall attached and the brick usually serves no structural purpose.

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Old 05-01-2021, 04:47 PM
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If your copy of the picture is clear enough that you can zoom in, you may be able to estimate the overall height by counting the courses of bricks.

However, there's no guarantee the bricks on that building exactly match the modern standard size for a common brick...back then they could vary a fair amount, depending on who made them and where.

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Old 05-02-2021, 02:22 AM
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Looks like a common 10 foot ceiling building ... so about 22' from top of foundation to eves. Walls would certainly be same thickness bottom to top.

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Old 05-02-2021, 11:43 AM
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Default bricks

With the building being built around 1870, many years before electric lighting, it would have maximized the size of the windows to take advantage of natural lighting. Enlarging the picture, it clearly shows that the window lintel consists of 17-or-so vertical bricks and using a modern standard 2 ˝ inch brick thickness, this indicates a window frame width of about 4 feet and the windows appear to be at least twice the height as their widths.

Using the 17-or-so vertical brick window lintel length as a “yardstick”, it appears the brick part of the walls is close to 30ft tall.

Likewise, using the 17-or-so vertical brick window lintel length as a “yardstick”, I think the person walking at the right-side corner of the building is very close to the right-side corner of the building and can be assumed as being about 5 ˝ feet tall.

Note that there are two other people sitting several feet off the left-side corner of the building. They appear to be adults and comparable in dress and size as the walking person.

The building lasted about 30 years when it was replaced by a larger building. The date of the photo is unknown. It appears to be in disrepair and the picture may have been taken just prior to it being replaced.
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Old 05-02-2021, 12:08 PM
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I was a bricklayer for 13 years before going to carpentry until retiring. looks to me the second floor windows are 3-0 x 6-0. First floor are 3-0 x 6-6. My guess the interior(bearing) walls are 8" stone and plastered.

Really tough to tell with those pics

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