dwarf garden wall: damp and engineering bricks

[wombleboy]

I'm planning to build a small boundary wall in my garden next spring. Probably around 5 or 6 courses of bricks high, 2 skins.

Often one of the first things to go in garden walls is often the bottom couple of layers of brick - they blow, presumably from damp and freeze/thaw. Someone suggested I should use engineeering bricks for the bottom two courses. Any thoughts? I've got 3 concerns:

1) It seems like a good idea, but when I walk down the street I don't see anyone else with engineering bricks at the bottom of their wall (unless they have managed to get them identical to the facing bricks used on the rest of the wall). How come professional builders don't do this? Why aren't engineering bricks used below the DPC on houses?

2) Would it look naff? Engineering bricks are generally advertised as not being suitable as facing bricks

3) Different mortar mix for bonding engineering bricks?

Cheers!

 

[themiddleagedun]

There's ooo's of houses with engineering brick upto DPC...

 

[tony1851]

1) professional builders don't use them at the bottom of garden walls because they are more expensive than ordinary facing bricks.

2) many engineering bricks look good used as facing bricks. As the middleagedun will know, thousands of houses in the N.W. are faced entirely in engineering brick. (though these are the proper Accrington-type pressed brick, not the rubbish they turn out today).

3) choice of mortar is not easy - on a retaining wall you will need a harder mortar than normal, though not too hard as you will then get shrinkage cracking.

 

[wombleboy]

Cheers, I realised after I'd typed that it was daft of me to say that you don't so engineering bricks on houses - I should have said the half dozen houses I've lived in over the years haven't had them.