huangyhg

recycling bricks
i'm doing an investigation of an old abandoned, large, multi-story facility. the floors and roofs are wood framed, and the walls are multiwythe brick. the floors and roofs are completely shot, and cannot be reused. the brick walls are also in very poor condition. basically the building has to be demolished before someone gets hurt.
instead of knocking it down and sending it to a landfill, is there anything one can do with the remaining bricks that are in good condition? it seems like going through the rubble and picking out the good bricks is too labor intensive (and expensive). crushing the bricks up would be easy, but what uses does crushed up brick have? none that i can think of!

depending on the age of the brick, a lot of people pay a premium for re-claimed brick. they use it to build bars or feature walls. we salvaged relaimed brick from a school being demolished and used it to encase steel columns in our nearby building project (same era, early 1900's). if the brick is newer, it may not have the same 'charm' and no one will take it except the recyclers. cleaning the brick is labour intensive and may not be economical for all projects.
in addition to the applications for recycled good brick that beton1 points out, another high-value use for is restoration of historic structures.
crushed brick can be used as roadway base material, general fill, if graded can be used as drainage layer, etc. wouldn't use it as concrete aggregate though.
leed projects that are historic in nature would be very interested in re-using clay brick, especially in the locale that the reclaimed brick is produced.
size color and texture is unique to individual brickyards and are not easily reproduced. my firm just completed a project refitting a 100 year old fire station that used reclaimed brick from a local but now defunct brickyard and it turn out very well. the clay had a purple-ish hue and could not be reproduced without access to the clay site where the original brick was excavated.
i've seen it in practice and was a bit surprised. . . a couple of guys knocking the mortar off the bricks and slinging them into a pickup truck. sometimes they used tools to clean them, sometimes they just banged a couple together. this was a pretty big job (4 story facade replacement) and it must of taken them forever.
see "salvaging brick" in the bia technical memos (no. 15):
there are companies that are set up for this. my father has a partner that i seem to recall regularly reclaims 90 - 95% of old brick from buildings that are being demolished.

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