Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/196

 172 COTTAGE, FAllM, AND VILLA ARCHITECTURE. 337. Econom;/ and other Advantages of Beam's lioUotv Walls. First, a saving of one third will arise in the article of biicks ; that is, if 4.500 would have been required to complete a rod of reduced work in the common way, 3000 will be found sufficient according to Mr. Beam's method : secondly, only one half of the mortar will be requisite : thirdly, the labour will not be greater tlian for common brickwork, though it will include rubbing the bricks in the heading course to one length, in order to supersede the necessity of rendering (plastering) within, and to leave the walls with a fair face ready for white- washing or painting in oil : fourthly, the hollows in the walls will prove an antidote to damp : and, fifthly, all the expense of inside plaster- ing will be saved. 338. DeaDi's proposed Va- riation in his Afethod of building. Instead of the brick on edge course, half bricks may be used as stretch- ers, figs. 310, 311, and 312 ; the bricks being divided lon- gitudinally, by drawing a knife or other sharp instru- ment about half through them, while in a state between wet and dry, and giving each a slight stroke of the trowel on the reverse side, to separate the halves, after it has been burned. This is done, partly because, if the halves were entirely separated before being 311 312 burned, the bricks would (in Britain) be subjected to a double duty ; and partly because the half bricks, thus treated, cost less, and are less liable to warp in the kiln, than if moulded separately. A fair charge for removing bricks from the hack (the stock or pile on which they are placed to be burnt), with the cutting and replacing them, is 5s. per tliousand. With respect to bonding the work, it may either be carried up in the old English manner see § 336, and fig. 306); or in the Flemish manner: that is, having an alternate header and stretcher in each course ; as the air may be made to circulate freely through the walls in both ways. The bond at the angles is shown in fig. 310; and fig. 311 shows the appearance of the work in elevation. Fig. 312 is a section in which at a is shown the footing, and three courses above it, carried up solid, with a drain brick, b, set in cement on a level with the supposed floor of the house. The use of this course of draining bricks is to carry off any water that might at any time find its way into the vacuity, when this mode of building is used in walls under the level of the ground. 339. Beam's Mode of building Fourteen-Inch hollow Walls. When the thickness of the walls is proposed to be fourteen inches, the stretching course may be of whole bricks, instead of half ones, and the heading course may be bricks fourteen inches long, which are frequently made for the purpose of coping dwarf walls ; but, should economy be the main object, Mr. Dearn proposes to use half bricks for the stretchers, which, be says, will produce a wall strong enough for all ordinary purposes ; and which will only require some degree of management when used for underground walls, when it will be necessary to take care that the lateral pressure of the soil outside does not throw the wall off the