The advantage of knowing the relative absorptive capacity of bricks has been stated in these pages in divers connexions. The means of arriving at the total capacity for absorption of water, as generally practised by experimenters, are very incomplete and founded on an erroneous principle. It is admitted by all that absorption is one of the very best tests as to the quality of a brick, but such tests are meaningless unless they imitate one or other or several of the influences to which the brick would be subjected on being used in the building, or other structure.

A common method is to weigh the brick when dry and then to immerse it in water for periods varying from one to three days, subsequently re-weighing it, the difference in weight between the dry and wet states being termed the brick’s “absorptive capacity.”

Mr. Heinrich Ries remarks16 that the absorption is determined by weighing the thoroughly dry samples, immersing in clean water from 48 to 72 hours, then wiping dry and weighing again. Vitrified bricks should not show a gain in weight of over 2 per cent. There are cases where bricks of apparently good quality shew a greater absorption than this, but they have great toughness and refractory qualities. Bricks made from fire-clays which will not vitrify so easily will, naturally, show higher absorption. Again, Mr. E.S. Fickes, of Steubenville, Ohio, has recently made17 a large series of valuable tests of both paving and building bricks, in which he shews the connexion between the power of absorption and the strength of the materials experimented with. Mr. Fickes’ more important conclusions are:—

1. The strength of the building brick, both transverse and crushing, varies in tolerably close inverse ratio with the quantity of water absorbed in twenty-four hours. The strongest bricks absorb the least water.

2. Good building bricks absorb from 6 to 12 per cent. in 24 hours, and with no greater absorption than 12 per cent. will ordinarily show from 7,000 to 10,000 or more pounds per square inch of ultimate crushing strength.

3. Poor building bricks will absorb one-seventh to one-fourth of their weight of water in 24 hours, and average a little more than one-half the transverse and crushing strength of good bricks.

4. An immersed brick is nearly saturated in the first hour of immersion, and in the remaining 23 hours the absorption is only five-tenths to eight-tenths of 1 per cent. of its weight, as a rule.

These experiments are of much interest and are probably approximately correct; but we venture to think that if the absorption experiments had been carried out in a different manner, the results would have been still more valuable.

Long before the publication of the results of the last mentioned series of experiments, the present writer had discovered the close connexion which subsists between the relative absorptive capacity of bricks and their strength; a slight correction must be applied for specific gravity. We are not prepared to enter into this subject at any length, but it may be observed that we should not have arrived at such close results had we experimented in the same way as the American authors just quoted (or others, for the matter of that).

When you completely immerse a brick in water you prevent the escape of air to a very large extent from the pores in the interior of the brick. An old-fashioned way of overcoming this difficulty, was to place the brick in the receiver of an air-pump and exhaust the air, subsequently immersing the brick. This latter method certainly possessed the merit of enabling the experimenter to arrive at total absorption very rapidly, but it did not imitate natural processes any more than does the thorough immersion of the brick in water.

A writer in the Builder of May 25th, 1895, p. 397, experimented as follows:—The bricks were placed in water in a large vessel, on edge, supported where necessary by flat blocks, to bring the uppermost face of each brick about ¼-inch above the surface of the water. Experience had shewn that by completely immersing a brick, the air did not get an opportunity of escaping from its pores with the same facility as when one surface was left out of water. This disability, it was found, materially impaired the results of the rate of absorption (rate, as well as total tests, being carried out). By arranging the experiments in the manner described, there can be no doubt that each brick absorbed the maximum quantity of water possible; at any rate, there was no water-pressure from above to retard the expulsion of the air.

The tests in the last-mentioned case extended over one week, the relative absorption being taken at intervals of 1 second, 1 minute, 30 minutes, 1 day, and at the end of the week. It was found that English vitrified bricks absorbed from 1.16 to about 1.85 per cent. in one week; white glazed and good red and blue facing bricks from 5.31 to 10.34 per cent. in one week; wire cut facers and rubbers, with white gaults, imbibed as much as from 12.93 to 20.50 per cent. of their dry weight in one week. The rate of percolation suggested many interesting problems, not the least important being the effect of chemical decomposition in prolonged immersions, whereby after being quiescent for a few days (after taking in the water for a few hours), absorption “burst out” again and continued to the end of the week. One thing is very apparent from this, namely, that for the lower grade brick even an immersion for one week is not sufficient for practical purposes. The writer remarks, “some of the red bricks from Bracknell, being placed in the vicinity of the white gault bricks (in the water), discoloured the latter to such an extent as to disfigure them. It was not merely a surface colouration; it extended to at least ¼-in. into the interior. The red colouring matter was iron, but there was not enough of it by weight dissolved to materially interfere with the experiments. This very clearly shews, however, the folly of erecting a building coursed with white and red bricks, when both are very absorbent and the red has so little hold of the iron of which it is partly composed—unsightly stains are bound to appear.”

This question of the solubility of certain ingredients of bricks, has not received the attention it deserves; and closely connected with that is gradual decomposition, whereby the brick becomes more and more porous—a potent factor in its ultimate destruction.