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Serious question, did anyone else not know brick grows about 1mm per meter over 20 years
I was on a job in Denver back in March repointing an old warehouse wall and the GC handed me a spec sheet from the brick maker. Buried in the footnotes it said fired clay masonry keeps expanding for decades, roughly a millimeter per meter of wall over 20 years. I always figured brick was basically frozen once it left the kiln. We had a control joint every 20 feet on that job and I used to think the engineer was just being fussy. Now I get why the older guys say never butt a wall tight to a steel column without a slip joint. I had to go back and check a porch I built in 2019 because the homeowner said a crack opened up near the corner, and sure enough it was a movement crack, not a settlement crack like I assumed. That one footnote changed how I lay out expansion joints on anything over 30 feet. So how are you all spacing control joints on long residential walls, same 20 to 25 feet or tighter?
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dixon.amy5d ago
Denver's clay soil plus brick creep is a bad combo, that 20 foot spacing on that warehouse was probably right. We run 20 feet on anything long and let the slip joints eat the rest.
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