Home Additions: Brick vs Lightweight Cladding

If you are hunting into a household addition and viewing current examples from builders who specialise in second storeys like Addbuild, you will have found that most property additions really don’t use bricks on the new stage.

The massive the greater part of property additions now use some form of light-weight cladding.

The assumption might be that this is a price tag concern.

Having said that, whilst expense is a issue, the use of light-weight cladding is now far more about taking benefit of advances in new building know-how: reduced charge is just just one of the several benefits.

Assumptions About Brick

Most of the basic Federation properties we see in Sydney – built at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th Century – are “double brick”.

This is primarily two partitions of brick with a cavity in concerning.

The prevalence and popularity of these properties suggests we have a tendency to suppose that brick is the finest materials for setting up each new households, and, by extension, house additions.

One particular of the explanations double brick was utilised is since, again then, brick was the greatest substance obtainable.

The use of double brick produced an extra layer of insulation to continue to keep households cooler in summertime and hotter in winter.

However, that double layer was, in fact, payment for brick’s shortcomings.

First of all, bricks aren’t that thermally effective, and next, they aren’t h2o resistant.

As Federation owners would attest, at the time the inside layer of their double brick residence heats up, it takes a lengthy time to interesting off because that heat radiates back within the house.

The porous mother nature of brick also means that damp can eventually filter via to the interior wall developing condensation or worse.

Assumptions About Lightweight Cladding

For many people today, light-weight cladding is synonymous with ‘weatherboards’, a product that has been utilised to develop houses in Australia for 150 a long time. Weatherboard is primarily a picket board with a zinc alloy coating for protection in opposition to drinking water injury.

Weatherboards turned well known as a lighter and decreased expense substance to use, so we now associate them with ‘cheap’. We also know that more mature weatherboard residences generally really don’t accomplish very well in warmth or cold.

And weatherboards will need to be painted each 5-6 a long time to manage their drinking water resistance.

Having said that, that broader group of resources known as “Lightweight Cladding” has expanded enormously because those early times.

The most recent engineering utilised in this cladding now suggests there is a array of outstanding lightweight resources that offer both equally outstanding insulation and drinking water resistance.

Addbuild utilizes a specific product in all over 70% of our constructing assignments, Foamular. As well as staying immensely thermally productive and water resistant, Foamular has other major rewards:

• It can be completed with a clean render to match a cement-rendered brick property
• It can be 50-70mm thick, letting home windows to be recessed to match the relaxation of the house
• The epoxy render finish can be a particular color that in no way requirements to be repainted unless of course the house owner wants to change their house to a different colour.

And, sure, the value is substantially much less for quite a few superior motives when as opposed to brick.

Brick vs Light-weight Cladding

Remaining heavier than components like Foamular, brick has some other major drawbacks when setting up a next storey to a residence:

• With brick, your builder will need to have to increase much more help beneath
• Brick requires more scaffolding through development
• Brick partitions take much for a longer period to make – times vs . hours for Foamular.

All these things signify that brick is usually far more pricey to use.

On top of that, in our expertise, even if brick is preferred for a home addition, it is commonly one alternatively than double brick, even if the initial dwelling is double, because the price would be prohibitively more.

One brick is regarded as ‘brick veneer’ and whilst this could develop a additional unified glance for the concluded undertaking if setting up on prime of a brick dwelling, you have to be mindful about the deficiencies we talked about before about brick. A number of layers of quality insulation, for illustration, will be significant.

Other Challenges

There could be instances when working with brick is unavoidable.

This is typically only the situation if a home is heritage listed. The bricks made use of, home windows and roofing may perhaps have to match exactly the elements employed in the primary household.

In Summary

In essence, in terms of effectiveness, brick really comes out 2nd finest compared to the more recent materials on offer you and that’s why it isn’t employed as normally.

After you issue in the price tag variation, we generally uncover that if a house owner chooses brick, it is purely for aesthetic motives.

There is nothing at all erroneous with that alternative. As the modern case in point utilised at the top rated of this post reveals, a brick 2nd ground on leading of a brick 1st floor does search seamless. Even so, it is critical to have an understanding of the important value implications.

Future Steps

If you are wanting into a dwelling addition and want even further advice, Addbuild has a comprehensive suite of content to help Sydney property owners realize their choices.

If you are further down the keep track of and are searching for a builder, we’d enjoy to hear from you.

Addbuild is Sydney’s primary builder of property additions and extensions, with much more than 40 years working experience and virtually 2000 assignments finished.

We supply a ‘idea-to-completion‘ company that contains experienced designers and the management of the Progress Software procedure on your behalf.

Simply call our place of work on (02) 8765 1555 or mail us a information making use of our contact kind if outdoors of office hours.