

Silicon Valley startup reinvents the lowly brick - cwan
http://www.reuters.com/article/smallBusinessNews/idUSTRE58K47220090922

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ZeroGravitas
Interesting, though I found this comment section hilarious:

 _"The new bricks -- which the Brick Industry Association says are not
actually bricks -- will sell for the same price as traditional clay-based
ones. The Brick Industry Association says there is also no proof that products
using fly ash will last as well as traditional brick."_

Some classy FUD there from the BIA.

~~~
amalcon
The first thing that came to mind when I read that is, "There's a _brick
industry association_?"

Seriously, are bricks really a big enough product to be called an _industry_?
I'd think they'd just be part of a larger "building materials industry". Are
they volatile enough to need an industry _association_?

~~~
cdr
_"The plant is to be running before year's end. At first, the company will
make only 'facing brick,' used on the outside of buildings, a $2 billion
annual U.S. market. It plans to branch out into paving stones, roofing tile
and other brick markets."_

~~~
amalcon
$2 billion is chump change as an _industry_ goes. This is about equivalent to
what you'd get if there were a "Rap Music Industry". A "Microsoft Industry"
would be about six and a half times _larger_ in terms of earnings.

Roofing tile was something I hadn't considered, though. That could be huge.

~~~
frig
He's talking about "facing bricks" being $2 billion unless it's a poor choice
of phrasing.

These are non-load-bearing purely-decorative bricks. What does your intuition
tell you is a good ballpark for the ratio of "load-bearing" bricks to
"decorative" bricks?

~~~
amalcon
Zero to one? Brick isn't a terribly good structural material. It's basically
inferior to concrete. People like bricks because they look nice.

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DTrejo
I heard that fly ash can be radioactive - I hope these bricks are not.

>The recipe incorporates large amounts of fly ash -- a fluffy, powdery residue
of burned coal at electric plants, that can otherwise wind up as a troublesome
pollutant.

~~~
jerf
_Everything_ is radioactive. It's a question of levels, not whether or not it
is or is not radioactive.

Popping "fly ash radioactive" into Google gave me
<http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html>, "Radioactive Elements
in Coal and Fly Ash: Abundance, Forms, and Environmental Significance", the
most relevant sentences being:

"Fly ash is commonly used as an additive to concrete building products, but
the radioactivity of typical fly ash is not significantly different from that
of more conventional concrete additives or other build-ing materials such as
granite or red brick. One extreme calculation that assumed high proportions of
fly-ash-rich concrete in a residence suggested a dose enhancement, compared to
normal concrete, of 3 percent of the natural environmental radiation."

As that says, there are other mildly radioactive materials already in use,
with insignificant increases over natural environmental radiation.
_Everything_ is radioactive.

Furthermore, when used in a brick, the only significant type of radioactivity
that would matter is gamma rays, as alpha and beta radiation would largely be
block by the brick itself, and, since you're likely to have drywall or
something between you and the bricks, the drywall. (Which is way more than you
need to block beta.) I'm not sure how much gamma rays there are in the uranium
breakdown path, but it may not be as much as you'd think.

Bonus link: <http://www.keystonegranite.com/radiation.php> ("Trace amounts of
uranium are sometimes incorporated into materials used in construction. These
include, but are not limited to concrete, brick, granite, and _drywall_.")
Well, so much for the drywall shield. :)

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ars
There was a big hoopla recently about granite used for kitchen counters
sometimes being radioactive.

~~~
lief79
Sure, most people hear radioactive, and think of Chernobyl, cancer, and
Godzilla. In reality, radiation is everywhere, and it's a question of levels
and risk. I doubt the radiation in bricks would compare to the exposure to
radon in the typical house.

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bitwize
"Low carbon footprint of production"? For a brick made from by-products of
BURNING COAL? Surely you jest.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Well, I suppose they aren't burning _more_ coal than they were already, and
that carbon shouldn't be counted twice (once for the power and once for the
brick).

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mildweed
I like the thought of a second industrial revolution. We have the technology.
We can rebuild (him).

