08-12-18, 04:28 PM
as another bricky with over forty years of slapping the old Work Hard and Starve about, I gotta say summat about LBCs. Coming from cambridgshire thats all I laid for the first twenty years or so As you say a horrible cheap brick back in the day, now a horrible expensive one. Fired from Fuel rich clay out of the fletton/yaxley/whittlesey pits, they only had to be burnt so much when the clay itself would then burn to finish te job. That meant an incredibly porous brick that wont survuive even one frost/thawcycle. As im sure Tommy can verify..stick a dry LBC in a bucket of water and yu can hear and see it sucking the moisture in..pull it out and its instantly dry. So not only have you got one useless turd of a weak brick, but it sucks the moisture out of the compo before proper "hydration" (the chemical reaction by which any cementatious mix ie compo/concrete/render hardens) can take place.
They used to be cheap but ae one of the most expensive bricks you can buy now, especially considering theres always about thirty in a pack of 380 that are broken..not funny at approx. 40p a brick. Id never use them nowadays to get a match with old lbcs..they never look right anyway, lighter shades, smaller bricks, and with rustics a completely different scratch pattern.
I'd go for an ibstock or summat that contrasted well..or even one of the matching bricks that other manufacturers use..Ive used another firms "heathers" tied in brickbond for instance, and they were a perfect match