The Many Advantages of Concrete Bricks
Cement bricks have many advantages, making them a good choice for construction across many environments and applications. In the home environment, cement bricks can be used to build homes as well as garden structures such as retaining walls, and driveway and walkway paving. Furthermore, they are frequently used in the construction of lowcost housing for the numerous reasons listed below.
Bricks manufactured using concrete are typically cheaper than clay bricks, both to make and to build with, and are much stronger than ordinary bricks. The crushed stone that goes into the manufacture of cement bricks is often what gives them their strength. They are also highly durable and low maintenance. Often, the concrete continues to cure even after manufacture thus making the cement bricks even stronger.
Cement bricks are available on the market in a number of shapes, textures and sizes and standard cement cricks come in two types: solid and hollow.Whether solid or hollow cement bricks are used depends on the purpose of the construction. Hollow cement bricks are lighter and therefore easier to handle, and whilst it may seem that solid cement bricks might seem to be stronger, hollow bricks can be filled with cement during construction for additional strength. Hollow cement bricks tend to be fairly large (sometimes as big as 4.5 ordinary clay bricks combined) so they are quicker to build with.
Another advantage of cement bricks is that they can be moulded into a variety of decorative shapes to suit the purpose for which they are to be used. Some are even made to interlock which means that they do not require concrete to ‘glue’ them together. Cement bricks to be used for exterior paving and walls are often coloured and placed in interesting patterns but the cement bricks used in structural wall construction, however, are typical raw and require plastering and painting.
It can be said that clay bricks are lower maintenance than cement ones because they do not require painting like cement bricks. However, clay bricks are more permeable and tend to absorb more water than their cement counterparts. Thus the only obvious disadvantage of standard raw cement bricks is that they are rather unsightly but this is easily remedied with plastering and painting the plaster in an attractive colour, making cement bricks an all-round winner in the masonry production and construction industries.