My grandfather built his holiday house out of them. he made a couple during the week with a mould and drove them to the house on the weekends. Took him a few years to build.
It was a pretty sturdy house, but Im not sure of the specific propertes of the bricks themselves.
I was thinking Besser blocks, but not sure if they were around in the 30's?
I personally like Bessar - ugly as, and usually used for retaining walls and factories - but I prefer them to normal brick when used for the 60's apartments etc (though maybe not the vermiculite ceilings that often accompany them!).
The Y-man:I personally like Bessar - ugly as, and usually used for retaining walls and factories - but I prefer them to normal brick when used for the 60's apartments etc (though maybe not the vermiculite ceilings that often accompany them!).
That is very impressive - and what a great way to build a house. He would've put a lot of thought and care into it!
OK this is what wiki says:
A concrete masonry unit (CMU) ? also called concrete brick, concrete block, cement block, besser block, breeze block and cinder block ? is a large rectangular brick used in construction
But I'm still not satisfied because I can't see the ugly rippled old block in any of the photos. I wonder why they used these instead of double-brick? Cheaper? Home-made using a mould? There's another house in the same street that looks like it was built in exactly the same way with the same block.
Unfortunately, the one I'm interested in has had quite a few additions made to the building and has cracks just like any double brick building around here.
Anecdotally I haven't seen too many cinder block constructions suffer structurally, but they aren't that common around here for me to notice any patterns.
Aesthetically, nothing a little bit of render can't fix.