Benefits Of Clay Bricks
Return On Investment
The true cost of owning a home is measured by how much it costs to maintain and operate the building. The longer the building lasts the fewer materials and less energy it will consume in the long term. Clay Brick fulfils all the requirements for solid quality construction, providing homeowners with the most energy-efficient and cost-effective solutions in the long-term.
Wealth Creation
Thanks to its immense durability, structural integrity and maintenance-free characteristics, a clay brick home never goes out of fashion and always looks its best. Clay brick homes are always in demand, and thereby define the benchmark for superior investment value.
Creative Expression
Available in array of colours, shapes and textures to suit any architectural design, clay brick is a natural complement to the functional and aesthetic needs of any area. Combinations of bricks and construction methods, like stone and timber, can be used for creative expression.
Durability
Clay bricks have high dimensional stability and compressive strengths. As one of the strongest building materials, clay bricks buildings can last forever. The many century-old clay brick structures that remain today have proved its durability many times over. Thus, with almost no maintenance, clay brick buildings can outlast generations.
Fire Resistance
Clay brick is incombustible and cannot contribute to the start or spread of fires, or make it more intense. Being inert, it also does not emit any toxic fumes or VOC’s under fire conditions.
Hence, clay brick walls achieve maximum fire ratings.
Healthy Buildings
Made of clay and shale, clay brick is a product of earth. Therefore it is chemically inert. Unlike other man-made products, it does not release and VOC’s harmful toxins or gases into the atmosphere, and thus facilitates superior indoor air quality, free of allergens.
Clay bricks is not a food source for mold, a major cause of ‘sick building syndrome. In fact, its natural porous features allow for the building to breathe easier, as a means of allowing for better ventilation. A good indoor moisture balance is also achieved through clay brick’s ability to sponge up any excess humidity and release it back into the atmosphere. Thanks to natural occurring properties and high density, clay brick shields noxious insects and rodents from breeding or chewing through its walls.
Energy Savings
Clay brick is a natural insulator. It works like a thermal battery, absorbing outdoor heat by day, and slow releasing it into the building at night, so as to regulate indoor temperatures. The more thermally efficient the building, the greater the energy savings will be, as the need for expensive heaters and air-conditioners is minimised, saving you money.
Sound-proof Buildings
Clay brick curbs the transmission of airborne noise. Gone are the days of hearing the children next door or the traffic outside, the thermal mass inherent in a clay brick wall acts as a natural sound barrier that also regulates building temperatures indoors.
Optimal Comfort
Most parts of South Africa experience large variations in temperatures between day and night. For comfortable indoor temperatures to be maintained, it is essential for walling materials to have high levels of thermal capacity (C) and thermal resistance (R), as in clay brick. Through intelligent construction, Passive Solar Design principles, and high thermal mass clay brick walling envelopes that are compliant with SANS 204 energy efficiency standards, achieving thermal comfort in you home all year round is straightforward.
Longest Life Cycle
Clay brick has an extensive lifespan exceeding 100 years. The measures taken by the Clay brick manufacturers of South Africa to reduce clay bricks embodied energy at cradle to gate, has a knock-on effect on the operational energy usage, including the heating and cooling of a building over its life, and is measured in a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
Clay brick offers the best returns when you examine the LCA’s of various building types.
The Recyclability
Research shows that 40% of waste dumps comprise of construction materials, resulting in stringent waste regulations being implemented.
Salvaged clay bricks with all its properties intact can be cleaned and reused in other constructions. They can also be crushed and used as a sub-base for roadways or redeployed as an aggregate.
