Although brick homes are considerably more expensive than homes built with standard siding, brick homes retain heat better overall. As long as it’s properly maintained, a brick exterior home offers many advantages over other options. In terms of long-term quality and endurance, a home built with bricks is generally worth the extra expense for many reasons, one of which is the energy efficient factor, according to the San Francisco Gate.
Naturally Eco-Friendly and Energy-Efficient.
Brick is one solid building material that offers outstanding thermal mass qualities along with retaining heat better, according to Smarter Homes. Thermal mass is essentially the ability of a dense, heavy material to store heat effectively and then subsequently release it slowly over time.
If you’re the owner of a brick home, what this means is that throughout the months of summer your home stays significantly cooler during the warmest part of the day. On the other hand, in winter time the walls of your brick home will actually store the heat and then bounce it back to you. Wood, aluminum, vinyl, or artificial stucco are all light and thin building materials that don’t possess the excellent thermal mass qualities of brick. The exceptional thermal mass properties that brick offers have been around forever. Homes with brick exteriors save on both heating and cooling energy bills and are a super-efficient natural insulator. Brick is slow to absorb or lose heat, which greatly reduces your energy expenses overall.
Superior Temperature Control
According to expert home builders, brick works a great deal differently than conventional insulated siding. Once insulation is integrated with a home’s brick exterior, the insulation itself serves as the main barrier to the cold and heat. Brick also helps to stabilize the internal temperatures of your home by impeding how much heat passes through your walls. During the summer months, this means that on the hottest days of the season, the heat won’t be able to permeate the inside of the home as fast as it normally would in a house made from more lightweight building materials such as siding or wood. During the winter, your home’s interior walls will effectively absorb and then redistribute heat better throughout your entire home.
Better Moisture Control
According to a prominent, independent research laboratory on building products, brick veneer type wall systems are able to control moisture much better than standard wall assemblies with other conventional exterior building materials. And so, brick veneer type wall assemblies greatly help diminish insect infestations, wood rot, mold growth, and fastener corrosion in wood much better than any other kind of wall system.
Other Key Benefits of Brick Exterior Homes
Brick is the most eco-friendly material ever made for home building purposes. Given the importance buildings have regarding energy usage, brick should ideally be an integral part of a proactive green approach due to the following reasons:
- Limitless Recycling Options – Brick can be recycled in many ways including crushing it to use for sub-foundation materials and chipping it as a solution for long-term landscaping mulch.
- Minimal Waste Product – Nearly all of the clay that’s mined is utilized during manufacturing, which makes the subsequent recycling and waste control unequalled compared to any other material used for building purposes.
- Brick is Natural – Brick is primarily produced from shale and clay, which are considered some of the most plentiful materials that exist on the planet.
Related Resource: Vinyl Siding
Brick is the most naturally abundant material available anywhere. Since it’s incredibly durable, environmentally responsible, and makes brick homes retain heat so well, is probably why it’s been around since the start of some of the most ancient civilizations to date.
