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Old 01-27-2009, 10:55 AM
 
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I don't know if this is true or not, but....I once worked for a company that investigated credit applications. I had to go look at the house and was told how to tell the difference between solid brick and some type of brick veneer.

I never got to see a solid brick house. About six or seven rows of brick are laid the usual way, with the long side showing, Then you would see a row with the bricks turned with just the ends showing. You see this in the much older houses, but it's expensive contruction. There will be two "walls" with rock, or debris in between. Then the crosswise brick tie the two rows in place.

I just read the above paragraph over again. It sounds confusing, but I can't think of another way to explain it. I don't think there is such a thing as a modern solid brick home.
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Old 01-27-2009, 01:02 PM
 
Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
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Quote:
Originally Posted by desertsun41 View Post
Look around the windows. Real brick will have whole sized bricks laying flat and front to back and pitched downward towards the outside at the bottom of the window. Veneer brick just simply gets cemented to whatever structure is already there. The edges will be exposed and you will see where they are only 3/8th" thick.

And finally, there is nothing wrong with brick veneer. Nothing. A real brick home does add value while a veneer brick home does not. But the veneer will make the house look just as nice and just as attractive. Dont be afraid to buy a brick veneer house. Nothing at all wrong with it.
I concur about realtors. I'm sure there are knowledgeable real estate agents out there, but I have never met one.

However, this flies in the face of my understanding of brick vs. brick veneer. I had been under the impression that a brick veneer home is basically a stick framed structure cased in brick. The brick veneer wall can incorporate real brick laid by real masons, but it is not the structural element and only for appearance, hence veneer. The tip-off for brick veneer would be if the brick does not go from the foundation to the eave. Also, it would be very rare indeed for a (recent construction) two story house to be anything but brick veneer. A proper brick home would have brick walls that bear the overburden and would be brick from floor to ceiling and on the interior and exterior, sandwiching a substrate of some character or possibly cinder block (although that would really be a brick veneer also).

Also, while I know exactly what you're talking about I don't know what you call the 3/8" brick sheets.
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Old 01-27-2009, 01:55 PM
 
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Default Veneer = Fake

Quote:
Originally Posted by jimboburnsy View Post
I concur about realtors. I'm sure there are knowledgeable real estate agents out there, but I have never met one.
When you talk about anything as a veneer, usually that means it is fake or a pretense. It wants to look like what it is not.

Leave it to then realtors to mess up a good thing.

If the house is real brick, laid on a brick ledge then it is real brick. Or you might call that house more accurately brick sided, hey the brick is acting like a siding in most USA built versions.

You can also have the same thing as a veneer brick, which is fake brick but again acting like a siding material. So I might call it fake brick sided.

Can even be stucco made to look like fake brick siding but does the same function. So could have fake fake brick sided house.

I know one young lady that actually does have a real brick house. Sucker is a Victorian style with the walls bunches of brick thick. Nothing but brick, as in real brick walls. Even wall papered inside over those brick walls. Bring your money, hard to heat, hot in summer but it does look fancy. Real brick, sided with brick, brick forever.

If you want to know what something is never ask one of them real estate agents, just go look for yourself. I remember looking at a house and it had old wood rived siding, duh with no sheathing under it. When I asked if that would drop the price, answer was no, that was "Standard" but it would make a lovely house for me. Translation..... Who cares what it is, they just need a payday. They will call it whatever it takes to get it.
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Old 01-27-2009, 04:35 PM
 
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The cheapo 3/8" brick is typically called face brick and is not brick veneer.

The explanation of brick veneer as real bricks siding a wood frame home is a nice way of explaining it.

And a real brick masonry home would be easy to spot beause it would have major jambs at the windows instead of them sitting flush or near fluch like in modern homes. Also you would have either lintels, arches or slanted beicks with keystones over all the openings and not simply brick turned perpendicular.

You can insulate on the interior face of a 'real' brick wall to help with heating cooling since the brick is like a sponge otherwise. BT- forget realtors- I once got into an argument with a preservation officer when we were rehabbing a dialpidated wood structure we could not tear down. The woman wanted us to preserve the exterior siding as is with no alteration. It took a site visit and a lot of skill to finally get her to acknowledge that we could not present a building with no sheathing or vapor barrier as a safe structure or one that could endure an use.
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Old 04-01-2010, 02:36 AM
 
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Default My House is Solid Brick... for now.

I own a house that was built in the early 1880's. It is a Victorian style double brick house with a limestone foundation, and has 2 working solid brick chimneys, one of which is in use by a boiler and the other is waiting new lining to be code worthy since they never lined those things 130 years ago. The inside walls have the old horse hair plaster though it's cracking in places from lack of winter humidity. I can confirm that solid brick houses do indeed exist because I am inside one right now typing this. You can usually spot a real brick house by the imperfections and the feel of the Mortar. Take a look at the date the house was built. The older the house, the longer the brick would have been exposed to the elements, the less perfect they would appear. My bricks are 4 inches by 2 inches by 8 inch 2 cm. I can measure them because the bare brick is visible from the inside too in one wall between the living room, and the kitchen.

Because of settling and weathering issues, I actually have to rebuild a 15 foot 2 inch long by 20 foot tall section of wall with new materials. It's only in the house extension built in 1903 that was never tied into the original wall built in the 1880's but the problem I ran into is that I simply cannot find old materials that line up with those dimensions so I have to use new materials. My plan is to go with a wood framed wall in the extension, line it up to the other 45 feet length of brick wall, and then install brick veneer siding on the outside of the entire brick house, and over the 15 foot rebuilt wall. So from the outside it is seamless.

So in this scenario, although there will be a single room with a single wood framed wall, it is essentially an original solid brick house with an original limestone foundation that uses brick veneer outside of it. So even if you see a house that you know has brick veneer you still can't use that to say it isn't also brick. And even if one wall isn't brick doesn't mean that wall wasn't part of an extension, and that the house still retains the original outside wall so that it remains with 4 original outside brick walls intact.

It also comes down to the type of brick veneer. The type I am going with is actually real brick itself, made the same way any other brick is made (I actually considered taking the original bricks I remove to cut them in half and use them as the veneer, but I think I'd like to make the house as a whole look better), but is made on panel sheets. So by any definition it is essentially a brick house with brick siding.

Hope hearing about my house didn't confuse you too much. But reading about your difficulty convinced me to make sure I take pictures of the project as it unfolds so I can prove it's solid brick. Here's a picture of it as it stands right now. It's a rehab.

***
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Old 04-01-2010, 08:19 AM
 
Location: I think my user name clarifies that.
8,292 posts, read 26,563,652 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimboburnsy View Post
I concur about realtors. I'm sure there are knowledgeable real estate agents out there, but I have never met one.

However, this flies in the face of my understanding of brick vs. brick veneer. I had been under the impression that a brick veneer home is basically a stick framed structure cased in brick. The brick veneer wall can incorporate real brick laid by real masons, but it is not the structural element and only for appearance, hence veneer. The tip-off for brick veneer would be if the brick does not go from the foundation to the eave. Also, it would be very rare indeed for a (recent construction) two story house to be anything but brick veneer. A proper brick home would have brick walls that bear the overburden and would be brick from floor to ceiling and on the interior and exterior, sandwiching a substrate of some character or possibly cinder block (although that would really be a brick veneer also).

Also, while I know exactly what you're talking about I don't know what you call the 3/8" brick sheets.
Spot on, as usual.

The house we're currently living in is 2-story brick, built in 1929. It is brick, not brick veneer. However, the brick is on the outside of a full wooden frame & wood sheeting.

So is it a brick house or not?

I say "yes," it is a brick house. In fact, I believe it is the best of both worlds. Because it is built so well, it has an excellent foundation & basement (no cracks, separation or problems in the 80-year old concrete block walls), it has top-quality lumber in the frame, and solid oak woodwork throughout. The "real" brick on the outside is the icing on the cake!

I would also disagree with the person who said "brick has a horrible R-rating. While it doesn't insulate like actual insulation, there's no denying that good brick, laid right, will add some insulating quality to a house.
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Old 04-01-2010, 09:37 AM
 
Location: Johns Creek, GA
17,403 posts, read 65,535,896 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Omaha Rocks View Post
I would also disagree with the person who said "brick has a horrible R-rating. While it doesn't insulate like actual insulation, there's no denying that good brick, laid right, will add some insulating quality to a house.
Well, if you consider R-0.44 (average value for typical modular[4"] brick wall) insulating quality I can't argue with...
Oh, and by the way- that "person" you disagreed with is a registered architect.
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