Brick has long been valued as a building material. You may immediately imagine using brick for a wall, be it a retaining wall or a building wall. However, the material has many uses, both internal and external. Even used brick can convey many benefits, so brick is ideal for many home-improvement projects.

Adaptability of Brick

As noted above, brick is an adaptable material. It's not used for wall façades alone - the material has many other uses.

For instance, many homeowners use bricks for pathways. The material is not only durable but also permeable, meaning it allows water to seep back into the ground and refill groundwater reservoirs rather than create a flow down a slope. Used brick is ideal because conformity of shape and color are less emphasized for garden paths.

Even broken brick has its uses. For example, if you value that old-world appeal of a recycled material, you can use brick to lay an informal patio floor. You'll start with a sand and gravel base and border made of the most uniform bricks. From there, you create your own pattern made of the broken bricks. The end result is a patio that's completely unique to your home.

Eco-Friendly Building

Along those same lines, one of the best reasons to incorporate used brick into a home-improvement project is green building. When you use recycled materials instead of new, you make use of something that might otherwise have been thrown into a landfill. Recycling materials thus is a more sustainable option than buying new.

What's more, you decrease the cost of manufacturing that material. And the savings aren't just in the monetary cost. Brick is composed of sand and clay primarily. If you're not buying new bricks, those materials don't have to be excavated for your project. You also reduce your carbon footprint because you don't pay for with manufacturing the bricks and transporting them to a showroom.

Beauty of Color Variegation

Brick is considered a high-end material at least partially because of the cost. New brick is typically uniform, which may be the desired effect for some building projects, such as home exteriors. That said, a wall of red brick is not the only option.

Used brick features a time-worn patina. You might see the standard red or gray you typically associate with the material. However, the chemical components of brick start to show through over time. You'll start to see copper and green splotches - patina. You'll also see where the brick has faded to pink, peach, or even white.

So, if you utilize used brick for a decorative project, such as a walkway or a patio floor, you don't just get unique patterning from the different shapes and sizes. The color variegation will also create a singular pattern that can provide a focal point in your backyard.

Unique Qualities of Brick

Bricks' qualities are not exclusively aesthetic. Indeed, brick is a prized material because of its building qualities as well.



For example, bricks have a low thermal conductivity. Therefore, they're an ideal material for keeping a space climate-controlled. As noted above, you may not want to have used bricks used for the façade of your house. However, if you're building a shed, used bricks might be a good choice, since a polished exterior isn't expected.



Bricks are also dense, which makes them durable. Therefore, you often see them used as an aggregate. If larger pieces are rounded enough, they can be seeded into concrete to make a textured walkway.



Even if the used brick isn't suitable for use as an exposed aggregate, you can have it used as part of your concrete mix. The density of brick improves the compressive strength of concrete, which can be useful for a retaining wall or concrete driveway.



Take advantage of the unique benefits of used brick for your next building project. Contact W R Beach, Inc., when you need a load of used bricks.