Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)
twistedsifter.com
twistedsifter.com
https://www.louispage.com/blog/bid/11160/worm-fence-what-is-...
Still, this seemed totally unecessary until I realized this mean they dont have to put any posts into the ground. No digging holes, which would be really nice when you're trying to fence up very large acreage.
That’s stability
A Serpentine Wall sounds better than a Worm Fence or Snake Fence.
Crinkle Crankle Wall is a bit more fun than ZigZag Fence.
A Ribbon Wall seems like a nice thing to have on your property vs a Battlefield Fence.
Ribbon Wall doesn't sound any more ridiculous than same-shaped Ribbon Candy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_candy) or Ribbon Cables (https://www.fxpstore.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/ribbon-w...), and ribbons don't call to mind atrocities or human suffering. Battlefields are terrible places where horrific things happen. That's not something I'd want associated with my own property.
I agree that it's not a good look to automatically prefer the military term to the "ridiculous" one. It smacks of toxic masculinity.
"Crinkle-crankle" is obviously archaic, and it evokes folk art and (in the US) colonial culture. That is fairly neutral, as placenames go.
And that's jenga.
ribbon sounds ridiculous and serpentine sounds technical? you are not a boomer. "Serpentine, Shel, serpentine!" -- Peter Falk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2_w-QCWpS0
Alan Arkin just died recently, RIP
You want a BATTLEFIELD wall. I want a Crinkle Crankle
I don't really see the cause and effect either. Surely the USs love of FORTRESS walls would be a reason they won?
Anyway, you say lost. I say we got rid of the tea wasters. Sounds like a win to me.
I realize some of this is lighthearted banter but sadly Mr. Internet can't really do that for very long.
It just seemed to me a very good example of '2 nations divided by a common language'
But I'm more a celebrate the differences kind of guy.
But point taken about the internet being the internet.
It would be nice if it were otherwise but for that you need a much smaller and more cohesive group. Large internet forums can't work that way - the long tail is too big, and there's always a supply of triggerable commenters.
Although yours are probably highly venomous too.
Not a complicated subject, but somehow seeing it with straight lines made it completely obvious and intuitive vs the wavy wall.
Talking about all this again brings back some memories. My hands freezing from digging in the rocky soil. My hands aching from swinging the club hammer I used to compress the stones around the oak post to form a foundation. Trying to start the chainsaw in cold weather. Taking the tools back to the toolshed in a squeeky-wheel wheelbarrow. All good memories. It's been forty years since I made a fence but I could do it tomorrow with no problem, and gladly.
It only takes a couple minutes to split the log, and would be less tiring than trying to saw the number of boards you’d need for a fence. You can also use smaller logs you’d otherwise ignore or use for firewood due to low yield when sawing.
For that matter, you don’t have to worry about milling, joinery, or bringing enough nails to fasten boards. You can also use green wood without any worries. All you have to do is stack.
In a world without power tools, the split-rail fence really was an ingenious design. It effectively removed the skill requirement altogether, and let you spend your time on more urgent tasks.
You can also observe corrugated steel and its use in construction, shipping containers, etc. Because these are steel and stronger than paper, the sandwich layers are not needed
Undulations for rigidity are everywhere!
You can mitigate the issues with proper design, but at that point may as well use a real metal roof or a prebuilt.
> The Dutch, meanwhile, began to develop curved varieties that could capture more heat, increasing thermal gain (particularly useful for a cooler and more northern region). The curves also helped with structural integrity, requiring less thickness for support.
[0] https://99percentinvisible.org/article/fruit-walls-before-gr...
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Science-Notebook/2015/0414...
^Probably not the best article for this, but it was easy to find and has a link to a chemical engineer's video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw
Edit: Just realized this is the same video you referenced. All of his work is fantastic.
His 'drinking bird' video is used on the wikipedia page for the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_bird#Physical_and_che...
Even that is an understatement, I love those videos
"The Ingenious Design of the Aluminum Beverage Can"
https://chbe.illinois.edu/news/stories/engineer-guy-ingeniou...
https://www.riverkeeper.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/bottl...
Or, more likely, it's a similar principle also at place in the design.
Can you provide any credible examples of concerns regarding their reporting on science topics?
https://www.google.com/search?q=uva+serpentine+walls&tbm=isc...
Crinkle Crankle Wall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33155781 - Oct 2022 (1 comment)
Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359550 - Dec 2020 (1 comment)
Crinkle Crankle Wall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21554986 - Nov 2019 (56 comments)
"use fewer bricks than a straight wall"*
*A straight wall of the approximal strength and length of a wavy wall, not just length.
My counter would be that from a practical perspective the amount of space wasted by the wavy design seems to negate the usefulness of the design.
Probably makes the lawn crew dizzy when mowing it too!
This sort of wall is, I think, just an aesthetic way of marking a property line/get some privacy.
It's all about adapting to local materials. The same technique was used by early settlers in New England (think about the ending of The Shawshank Redemption) because they had to get the stones out of the ground in order to plow and harvest - rather than just make a pile, they used the stones to build walls separating fields.
If I have 100 acres (square), I need ~2.5 km of wall, at ~150,000 bricks for a 1m wall single brick-width wall (deter animals, mark property).
At the online prices I'm seeing ($0.65), that's ~$100,000. If I have to make it all double width, suddenly its $200,000. $100,000 delta is still pretty relevant for a modern small scale farmer.
In the days before wire, brick walls were a cheap longlasting enclosure method, especially if wood or stones weren't easily available.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-fa...
Serpentine or Crinkle-Crankle walls, apparently a Dutch innovation.
> Although it's actually longer than a linear wall, a serpentine wall economizes on materials because the wall can be made strong enough with just one brick thin. The alternate convex and concave curves in the wall provide stability and help to resist lateral forces. Furthermore, the slopes give a warmer microclimate than a flat wall. This was obviously important for the Dutch, who are almost 400 km north of Paris.
> Variants of the serpentine wall had recessed and protruding parts with more angular forms. Few of these seem to have been built outside the Netherlands, with the exception of those erected by the Dutch in the eastern parts of England (two thirds of them in Suffolk county). In their own country, the Dutch built fruit walls as high up north as Groningen (53°N).
There's a stately home close to me that has a very short run of one of these walls, and the remains of the old brick kiln up on the hill side. If you know what you're looking for, you can also still see the hollows in the ground where the clay was dug, now fill of trees and bushes.
I suspect they are imitations of curved fruit walls popular in the 1600’s before greenhouses took off.
A wavy wall with a wave amplitude of X has the same toppling resistance as a straight wall with buttresses on both sides of length x/2.
Assuming this stackoverflow answer is correct[1], the sine wave has (slightly) less bricks.
Also, while brick is stronger in compression a buttress increases toppling resistance in both directions so you need to consider material properties not just the geometry.
Where did you get that number from, and how does it change as you vary the distance between buttresses?
Autocorrect strikes again.
Sections (640 acres)
This wall would work well at road field boundaries where a couple feet makes less practical difference than the large saving in materials.
The article suggests that, if you attempted to build a straight wall with a similar amount of bricks, that it would not be able to be freestanding (i.e. it would need to be buttressed or it would fall over). That's a significant feature of a wall to some people, so I don't think it's fair to dismiss the utility of that by suggesting that it's simply "less bricks for comparable strength," it's "less bricks for a freestanding wall."
If you want a freestanding brick wall, this seems to be the "ideal" way to do it, assuming you have the space required for the wave. I think the space needed would be a function of the wall height, so if you need a tall wall, you need more horizontal space for the wave and a wavey wall becomes less ideal.
Not necessarily. You might need a straight wall to be thicker or have more buttressing in that case as well. The requirements for each (waviness, thickness, buttressing) likely change to different degrees based on height, so wavy walls could become less ideal, or they could become more ideal.
I read the title and thought "duh". Maybe others were intrigued and clicked, but for me, this is just obvious. I had lots of legos, and own more now as a grandpa than, er, uh, I should. I guess spatial reasoning about bricks just is second hand at this point.
What the article likely leaves out, is that the all of the "corner only" touch points are going to create a more "pourous" wall. And collection points for crap.
the first paragraph explains it,
> these wavy walls actually use less bricks than a straight wall because they can be made just one brick thin, while a straight wall—without buttresses—would easily topple over
I put the following prompt in GPT4:
create a professional title and a click bait title for the following article
Then provided the article. This was the output:
Professional Title: "Crinkle Crankle Walls: The Aesthetics and Efficiency of Serpentine Wall Construction"
Click Bait Title: "You Won't Believe How These Weird, Wavy Walls Use Less Bricks Than Straight Ones!"
However, as the article indicates, the straight wall would not be as stable as the wavy wall. It needs buttresses to prevent toppling. That's the key advantage of the wavy design.
This is fun clickbait. Straight to the point, totally random quirky trivia, and most of the page is nice pictures. Love it.
"leading to greater strength than a straight wall of the same thickness of bricks without the need for buttresses."
I was trying to figure out how lengthwise it could have fewer bricks.
I understand that a wavy wall will be stronger than a straight wall of the same thickness, therefore if you need that additional strength it technically uses fewer bricks to reach it.
That said, if the alternative is a 2 layer straight wall, is the wavy wall equally as strong? Or is it just stronger than the single layer wall?
Without knowing anything about the subject matter, I’d assume that the strength goes in order of single-layer straight, wavy, double-layer straight. No? Seems like needing just the amount of strength the wavy wall provides, and no more, would be a fairly rare use case. Leading to double-layer straights most of the time anyway.
There’s also no need to be impolite. If it’s such an easy concept that you actually already understand, maybe explain it in layman terms instead?
The base of a double wythe wall is still only like 7", which if you're stacking say 84" of brick on top of that... seems pretty unstable to me.
The issue with a single layer wall isn't really the strength between bricks, or the bricks themselves - it's that a single layer wall has a very narrow base and is subject to tipping over.
The wave in the design makes the base of the wall act is if it were MUCH wider, preventing the tipping action of a single layer.
So the wavy design is only as strong as single layer of bricks, but it has a base 2 to 3 times the width of even the double layer wall designs. It will be much more resistant to tipping forces, but less resistant to impact forces.
The thing about most walls is they aren't really load bearing - they just delineate owned space - so the wavy design is great for large properties. Much less great if it's a tiny space and you're losing a good chunk of sqft to the wave.
Following the link which is supposed to explain another thing, why it is more resistant to lateral forces, it contains an explanation:
> The parameter a is the amplitude of the sine wave. If a = 0, we have a flat wave, i.e. a straight wall, as so the length of this segment is 2π = 6.2832. If a = 1, the integral is 7.6404. So a section of wall is 22% longer, but uses 50% less material per unit length as a wall two bricks thick.
"as a wall two bricks thick". Hmmm. Even bigger savings as a wall three bricks thick.
Veneer, all the bricks are in the same orientation: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/65/ec/1b65ec6fdb488d3dab28...
Supporting wall, notice the alternating pattern: https://www.backwoodshome.com/bhm/wp-content/uploads/2015/12...
Though I didn't see any real explanation of why a straight wall one brick thick will fall down...
For those whose childhood is a long way behind them, would you explain?
It works the same way with any thin and tall building, it needs to have support perpendicular to the main body. You'll note that most straight brick walls have thicker "towers" at regular intervals. Or it needs underground support, like concrete in the ground for a fence post.
Unrelated: Go buy a lego set! If you've forgotten the joy of LEGOs I encourage you to rediscover it. The kinds of sets they have available these days are vast and the cleverness of their building techniques needs to be seen to be appreciated.
Two bricks wide has a 2x wider base.
A wavy wall reinforces itself against the same forces (wind being the big one) allowing for thinner construction at an equivalent height.
I want to know how that compares to just adding some rebar along the way
It kept getting hit by cars until they finally installed a guard rail.
I guess the force of impact would be greater relative to scraping a straight wall.
The linked post does not explain why the walls are more resistant to forces. It just calculates the difference in length.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200521064022/http://splint.org...
The FAQ explains why they chose this logo:
The walls are one brick thick, but because of their design are both strong and aesthetic. Like a secure program, secure walls depend on sturdy bricks, solid construction, and elegant and principled design.
This was a question I had students prove out. With the bending moment of inertia being related to the cube of the thickness for a flat plate, the maths trickles out very quickly.
"Look, I have so much land I can just grow grass instead of crops, you plebs".
Particularly in arid climates it’s also "look how much I can afford to waste perfectly good drinking water!"
I notice a lot more people ditch the lawn for native plants now. Sure does look a lot less futile than spending a third of your lot on dead grass.
Many memories playing cricket on dry, prickly, dead grass as a kid.
Texas lawns commonly use some form of bermuda grass, which goes dormant during the hot season (typically late July to late September). Some lawns will mix in a rye grass which shows bright green color during this same season to preserve the look, but obviously this compromises the growth of both types of grass.
"The county of Suffolk seems to be home to countless examples of these crinkle crankle walls. On freston.net you can find 100 wavy walls that have been documented and photographed."
Although it's not explicitly said, let's suppose that every one of those wavy walls is in Suffolk. The population of the county is 761 350 - let's assume there are 100 000 homes (although there is the city of Ipswitch, it's otherwise largely a rural county where single-family homes will be common). So only roughly one-in-one-thousand homes in Suffolk has such a 'wavy wall'. Elsewhere in the country probably even less - e.g. I've never seem one.
Any for everyone complaining about mowing - do you actually have grass all the way up to your boundary wall? In my experience it's pretty common to have a flower bed running all the length of the boundary, so mowing would not be a problem.
yes, but you also need to take into account how many homes have any brick wall at all.
I wonder if this sort of structure could be built by 3D printing, say with concrete or even soil.
https://www.wevolver.com/article/understanding-the-gyroid-in...
If that was your point, sorry for misreading you.
In the era in which these were commonly used, bricks were largely made on-site or very nearby. So you saved on labor twice - once to make the bricks, and again to place them.
> [Wavy walls] use more bricks than a straight wall of the same thickness
However they "resist horizontal forces, like wind, more than straight wall would."
> So if the alternative to a crinkle crankle wall one-brick thick is a straight wall two or more bricks thick, the former saves material
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...
There are many practical cases for a straight wall of bricks, it's not an "impractical case."
Caveat there is quite significant.
> There are many practical cases for a straight wall of bricks
Indeed the vast majority of cases yes.
and missing from the title
My gut instinct is that the point where a wavy wall changes from curving one way to another is a slight weak point and perhaps an angle there would actually be stronger. Might be totally wrong.
My mental reasoning for this is that a (pseudo) sinusoid spends a lot more of its path further away from the centre. Thinking of it as a point moving along the path through time, it will dwell and the peaks, and cruise through he centre. The contribution of each brick to wall stiffness will be related to the cube of the distance from the centre line (neutral axis), so more 'time' spent at the peaks is best. This holds true on the macro scale, but could vary on the scale of a half 'wavelength' as the lack of inversion of curvature could be beneficial there.
Everything moderately reasonable seems to be better than a straight line in this instance. In the limit, two much thinner walls, far apart, is the optimal solution, but that becomes unreasonable as those walls must be coupled together to provide strength.
FWIW The Blue Factory had the same kind of charm as the General Magic documentary
But how does this compare with a straight wall with brick columns every two meters or so? My guess this is the best compromise, and maybe that is the best compromise, as it uses about the same number of bricks as a curves wall, but the area wasted is much smaller.
A sine wave is probably closer, which would give an arc length of sqrt(1+cos(2pix/L)^2). This has no reasonable closed form I can find but it seems like it would be about 21% longer than a straight line.
Edit: Also a semicircle is pi/2 times as long as its diameter, not pi times.
A right isosceles triangle has a hypotenuse that's √2 (1.41) and 1/√2 = 0.71.
Stack Overflow seems to think it's around 2.4x, but I am not sure I could ever follow the math and I certainly can't now. I think the amplitude makes the difference here and SO is answering a different question, otherwise this article would be wrong and that wasn't my impression the first time I encountered this topic.
second edit: The article linked from this article says:
So a crinkle wall with amplitude 1.4422 uses about as many bricks as a straight wall twice as thick.
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...
I'd like to know if this wavy wall technique requires non-square bricks to be stronger. And is it stronger against sideways forces along the concave and convex sections. If it's only the same strength as a straight wall then I'd think it'd be worse as a retaining wall?
A wavy fiberglass roof uses less cloth and resin, and less reinforcement, than flat composite sheets would require.
A wavy roadside guard rail made of sheet metal uses less metal than a flat guardrail.
A snowshovel stamped/moulded with kinks in it can be thinner than a solid one.
...
Better headline would be "wavy walls use fewert bricks than thicker straight walls"
Quite pleasing to see it referenced in the article too.
Proper Suffolk that, like little pink cottages and good quawlity tea towels[1]. :D
I agree, the headline did a very poor job of summarizing.
And what about a straight wall with buttresses? Can we make them just as sturdy with fewer bricks?
Where does it say that?
To maximize the strength and minimize the bricks used, is a sine the best shape, or is there a better curve, and what is the best period and amplitude of the waveform? Does this solution change with the height of the wall?
So I guess a factor then will be how tall your wall is. A very tall wall will need a deep wave, just like a wall one brick high would need no wave at all.
"They use more bricks than a straight wall of the same thickness but they don’t have to be as thick."
> Popularized in England, these wavy walls actually use less bricks than a straight wall because they can be made just one brick thin, while a straight wall—without buttresses—would easily topple over.
It requires less bricks to wall off an area using a single-layer wavy wall than it does with a double-layer straight wall
If you want the brick wall to last, and you aren't building it on either bedrock or a deep foundation ($$$) - then your three choices are (1) build it to withstand substantial horizontal loads, (2) pay more for regular maintenance, and (3) wall will topple due to forces from normal soil movement.
A better description is "uses less bricks than a straight wall of equivalent resistance to horizontal forces"
> wavy walls that lawnmowers surely detest!
I don't want to use a plastic-shedding line trimmer or herbicides. I end up pulling out the grass near the edge, leaving a bare strip that takes a while to grow back, but it's a bit labour-intensive.
(twisted sifter)
I'll show myself out.