Glazed brick is a beautiful building material that literally makes a building sparkle. Architects love glazed brick for their sparkle, for their wonderful range of colors, and for the possibility of wonderful glazed brick shapes.

While most of the common details of masonry construction apply to construction with glazed brick, some changes must be made to these details to allow building a trouble-free glazed brick veneer. These changes are necessary because, unlike other brick, the glaze on the brick is impervious: neither water nor water vapor pass through the glazed surfaces. Because water and water vapor can not pass through the glaze, water can be trapped behind the glaze and the brick may spall during freezing temperatures. Thus, some of the details of construction are changed to provide more barriers to water entering the walls and to provide other means to extract water from the walls.

Before a design in glazed brick is considered, a number of documents should be read: Glen-Gery Brickwork Design Profile 4p7, which addresses the characteristics of glazed brick (available from your Glen Gery dealer), the Brick Institute of America’s Technical Note of Brick Construction 13, Ceramic Glazed Brick Facing for Exterior Walls, which addresses design considerations, and a number of other BIA Tech-Notes listed below.

Sadly, it has been our experience that single family houses and glazed brick do not go well together. Usually there is neither the necessary technical expertise nor the necessary finances available to design and use glazed brick and there have been failures for these reasons. Therefore, our second recommendation is that glazed brick should not be sold for use on exterior applications of residential construction.

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Page 2 of Tech-Notes #13 contains recommendations for construction with glazed brick. Glen-Gery has discovered that these recommendations are not adequate and has developed the following modifications to these recommendations:

1. Cavity wall (Tech-Note #21) construction or veneer wall (Tech-Note #28 & #28D) construction is

mandatory.

2. Examine the need for a vapor barrier on the heated side of the back-up to the brick.

3. Free standing walls, wing walls and parapets are subject to increased exposure and great care is necessary to ensure that these walls are designed and constructed properly.

4. Detail flashings at all window and door heads and sills, at the bases of air spaces, at lintels and shelf angles, at brick shelves, at the top of walls, and at any change in cross-section or construction.

5. Detail expansion joints in accordance with Tech-Notes #18 and #18A and Equation 2 in Tech-Note #18A

6. Provide flexible anchorage to columns and Beams.

7. Do not use glazed brick to cap walls.

8. Slope glazed brick sills at least ¼” per inch and flash below them.

9. Space open head joints no more than 24" apart horizontally at the top and bottom of each air space (shelf angle to shelf angle, for instance). Stagger these openings.

10. Do not use brick below grade.

11. Use a Type “N” or Type “S” portland cement and hydrated lime mortar meeting the requirements of BIA M1-88

If you have any questions regarding glazed brick, please do not hesitate to call us.