What is a Brick?

The brick will have a header face, a stretcher face and a bed face, as shown in the figure-1 below. To clearly understand the real concept in masonry construction, we will have to start from the basics. A civil engineer must have equal and above knowledge of a mason, even though he is the person executing the work and we are the one who supervises.

Fig.1.The three faces of a Brick

What is the Dimension of the Brick?

There is two dimension to brick. They are:

• Specified Dimension
• Nominal Dimension
• External Dimension
• Aperture dimension

The specified dimension is the actual or theoretical dimension of brick that is measured directly from the brick.

The nominal dimension is the dimension of the brick that is used in the construction plans. This is the sum of actual dimension + the construction joint.

External dimension is the wall thickness. It is the difference between the specified dimension and one joint. This will hence will miss a joint

Aperture dimension will have a joint. This will be the sum of specified dimension and joint.