Silicon Valley startup reinvents the lowly brick | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley startup reinvents the lowly brick

reuters.com

15 pointscwan23 comments

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.

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?

>Seriously, are bricks really a big enough product to be called an industry?

Are you kidding? If nothing else, the "historic districts" of many cities in America would support a brick industry.

"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."

$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.

The "Rap Music Industry" has millions of customers, numerous magazines, radio stations and a TV channel dedicated solely to it. That makes it very large in my book.

If you make brick cheap enough the market volume will grow. Currently aluminum siding is used, primarily for cost reasons.

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?

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

Face brick also insulates the building.

Today's xkcd http://xkcd.com/641/

I'm glad karma only goes to -8 per comment now, or I'd never have posted this :)

I think when lives may be on the line it's acceptable to draw attention to a lack of convincing data.

It's also worth noting that Calstar is starting with non-load-bearing brick markets, where lives are not on the line.

So perhaps there's more to it in this particular case.

I read that to my girlfriend, who works in the architecture and building industry, and she said "Apparently, fly ash is the hemp fiber of the brick industry".

Worth pointing out that fly ash is already widely used in the concrete industry for the same reasons - it's more environmentally friendly. Using it actually gives a building extra LEED points.

Fly ash can replace up to 50% of the cement needed in concrete - saying that 'there's no proof it will last' seems fairly ridiculous.

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.

A good pros/cons view of Fly Ash in concrete. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5204/is_2003/ai_n191...

And if it is radioactive (which I haven't seen referenced anywhere) then we're screwed because FA is used everywhere.

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. :)

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

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.

Heh, puts the "Chronic Low-Level Radiation Good for Us? Taiwan Housing Accident Suggests So" ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833662 ) story from a few days ago in a new light.

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

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).

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

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