
Sustainable engineers Kenoteq are reinventing the brick - kjhughes
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/going-green-kbriq-sustainable-brick-spc-intl/index.html
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apprenticemason
It would be interesting to see exactly how much CO2 was created in the process
of creating a brick vs the amount of CO2 created during transportation. This
tech seems like a good idea until you realize every brick is being produced in
one spot in England... the real problem isn’t creating these bricks, it’s
building out the infrastructure to supply a significant demand.

I work in the masonry trade, all of the materials we use are from brick yards
and quarries that are local (~75-100mi radius) for the simple fact that
transporting large numbers of pallets of brick over long distances is a
logistical nightmare. Storing them can also prove to be a problem, so much so
that we literally throw away thousands of bricks we have left over from jobs
every year. It’s rare that two customers would use the same bricks and we end
up keeping the extras until we know we’re not getting called back in to do
additional work.

They’re right that reclaiming bricks as being labor intensive work. The real
holy grail of this industry would be figuring out how to reclaim the trillions
of bricks already in circulation without needing human intervention. There is
often huge demand for antique bricks because a lot of the unique clay deposits
used to create the bricks end up being totally depleted. Milwaukee, WI is
famous for their Cream City bricks that were produced in the mid and late 19th
century but once the unique clay beds used to create these bricks were gone,
so were new Cream Cities. You can see these in just about every city’s
downtown in Wisconsin. I’ve spent many hours reclaiming these bricks from old
houses and factories because for one, they look incredible, and two, they’re
worth about a dollar a piece once they’re ready to be laid again (Pretty good
money if you’re good with a brick hammer). If there was a way you could dump a
house worth of old bricks into one end of a black box and spit out reusable
brick from the other end, you’d basically be printing money. Mortar is not
easily removed from brick without damaging the brick. That’s kind of the whole
point of the mortar being used as a binder in the first place.

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qohen
_Milwaukee, WI is famous for their Cream City bricks_

For anyone interested, Cream City bricks has a Wikipedia page[0] with pictures
of buildings built with them.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream_City_brick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream_City_brick)

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kube-system
We already have several reinventions of the brick which are stronger and more
eco-friendly -- we call them concrete blocks.

I thought it was pretty silly to compare this product to bricks on it's
cost/strength/waste. People aren't choosing brick for these factors anyway.
People choose brick mainly for the aesthetic.

~~~
aidenn0
Yeah, I lost it when TFA referred to bricks as "The building blocks of modern
suburban homes." I'm not sure what suburbs the author is familiar with where
new homes are made of structural brick.

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PaulDavisThe1st
The article is fairly UK-centric, and in the UK, most suburban homes are made
of brick.

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kube-system
"Brick" homes are common in the US too, but most made after WWII are simply
veneers over a structure of a different material. Are you sure that's not the
case there? I did an image search for "uk home construction", and all of the
instances on the first page also appear to be veneers.

Example:
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/615000-new-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/615000-new-
homes-thats-what-uk-housebuilders-could-put-up-on-their-
landbanks-a6791486.html)

~~~
pirocks
I'm another UK resident/former resident who can confirm that at least some new
suburban homes are constructed primarily from bricks.

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MrLeap
This article has inspired me to make a brick. The regular kind. I have tons of
clay and a forge that can melt steel, honestly it just never occured to me so
now I have to try!

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tonyarkles
Now you’ve got me googling “refining clay from soil”. Our city is built on the
most terrible clay gumbo imaginable, and I’ve got a huge pile of the stuff to
get rid of somehow...

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stonogo
This is in CNN Style for a reason. It's a neat research project, great for
prestige projects like Hyde Park. It just cannot compete with clay from a cost
perspective.

~~~
Pfhreak
I'd be curious if you've got some figures or if you are just guessing that
it's the case. (Intuitively, I'd agree with you, but I couldn't find any
info.)

Assuming also that the externalities of the existing brick manufacturing
industry are not costed into the price of a standard brick. Other sources
suggest that the k-briq is also more insulative than a regular brick, which
should impact the cost calculations as well.

~~~
Nasrudith
Technically true but wouldn't going with a cheaper exterior option and using
the saved cost for dedicated insulation be more efficient? Aside from airflow
it is usually windows and frames where the insulation property is relevant,
otherwise we would see using thicker walls instead of just spraying insulation
for cheap development.

I mean it is a neat concept but unfortunately efficiency often selects the
"boring" option.

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fizixer
I've heard great things about CEB (compressed earth blocks).

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hosh
Sounds like a more rigorously engineered form of the Compressed Earth Brick.
[https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Compressed_Earth_Blo...](https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Compressed_Earth_Blocks)

~~~
m4rtink
Many older village houses here in Czech Republic are made from compressed
earth bricks (using local materials & not fired). As long as you keep them
dry, they will last basically forever. If they get wet, they loose all
strength and the building collapses, making any floods particularly dangerous
for such buildings.

~~~
hosh
Do you think the k-briq they are talking about here will also lose cohesion
when things get wet?

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exabrial
I think the killer invention would be to solidify C02 efficiently for building
materials (much like trees do).

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saeranv
If only we could use trees as a building material!

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rapnie
Cross-laminated timber is quite promising in that regard.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=cross+laminated](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=cross+laminated)

~~~
eyjafjallajokul
Pretty sure they are being sarcastic and referring to wooden construction
(majority of US homes).

~~~
rapnie
Yea, I know. Mine was just an example of 'reinventing the wooden
construction'.

~~~
exabrial
Trees are great but require quite a bit of landmass. They're also slow :) As
part of an "all of the above solution", a way to do what they do artificially
would be handy

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brownbat
Tim Harford has an episode about why bricks have been so great for humanity
for so long, and a bit on why they are so hard to improve on:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz2w8](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz2w8)

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nitwit005
> To make it, construction and demolition waste including bricks, gravel, sand
> and plasterboard is crushed and mixed with water and a binder

I notice they don't mention what the binder is, and I see it labeled as a
"secret binder" in another article.

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nashashmi
As far as different mediums for building go, check out sirewall. Or insulated
rammed earth wall. It is only 9 pct cement. And can make some pretty charming
spaces.

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woah
What's the binder?

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lopmotr
I thought it would be cement and they were ashamed to admit that. But their
site says "no cement use when compared with concrete blocks". Not sure why
"no" has to be a relative term, so something sneaky might be going on there.

~~~
zxcmx
If I was forced to make a bet, I would guess fly ash.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US10669205B2/en?oq=US10669...](https://patents.google.com/patent/US10669205B2/en?oq=US10669205B2)

I think this is the patent, but they don't mention a "binder" per se. There
are several claims specifically relating to the exclusion of "tar" which seems
interesting. I think someone better versed in reading patents than I am might
be able to make more sense of that. Tar just doesn't seem like their style.
Maybe there are already claims on that or they are well known. But "organic
matter", "tar", "cement" or "fly ash" still seem like possibilities.

The patent also mentions "additive" (e.g. pigment / recycled toner) as
improving the strength of the resulting bricks and reducing moisture uptake.
It can be added in surprising amounts (5-20%). That doesn't seem very scalable
though.

Or, of course, they could have come up with something else in the meantime.
Distinctly possible.

