Brick: Lakeside’s Cornerstone, Part 3 Building Arches

In Part 2 of this series of articles about Lakeside’s handmade bricks, we looked at the process of brickmaking -- preparing the clay, forming the bricks, drying and then firing the bricks in a wood-fired stack kiln that burns the bricks for at least a week. 

Once the bricks in the stack kiln have completely cooled, the workers dismantle the created in place kiln, sorting the bricks into various grades.

• The hardest bricks go into one pile to be used in weight-bearing outside walls.
• The softest bricks are reserved for their insulating qualities.
• Burned black bricks and those that are broken or warped are set aside to use to construct the next stack kiln.

Here at Lakeside, there are two more categories or sizes of brick often used while building area homes.

• The weight-bearing outside walls are frequently built with a larger, heavier brick -- the medio adobón. They are half the size of an old square brick made from mud adobe.
• The smaller bricks used here at Lake Chapala are close to the standard size brick used in North of the Border construction. Those bricks commonly weigh one pound and are 2.25" x 3.75" x 8" long. These smaller bricks are used at Lakeside in building boveda (arched) brick ceilings (See part 5, Boveda ceilings).
• If you stop to look at the bricks in the truckloads near the Ajijic Cemetery, you’ll discover that even among the bricks of this “standard” size there are differences in the bricks’ finish. You’ll find bricks with finished ends, some with finished narrow sides and others with a finished flat face. You’ll discover why when you learn the six different designs used to create boveda. (See part 6, Boveda designs.)
• A third common brick in Mexico is the same smaller size, but is fired differently, to make it more porous and lighter for the building of large ceiling domes (See Part 4, Domes and Vaults).

Building arched windows and doors

Many foreigners come to Mexico looking for a pseudo-hacienda-styled dream home lined and filled with arched portales, (arched covered sidewalks or terraces), doorways, windows, niches and other architectural details.

Learning how those arches made is part of exploring Mexican culture where the simple execution of complex shapes and concepts is a wondrous thing to behold.

Once the workers have created a framework of castillos (upright made-in-place steel-reinforced concrete beams, in the doorway at left above, they insert a horizontal support at the bottom edge of the arch curve, and then build up bricks in a temporary form the shape of the arch they wish to build. Next they fill in the spaces on top of the arch of bricks, and then insert a dala (poured-in-place horizontal beam). This entry arched door also features a mission-style arch on top. Notice that this doorway needs a great deal more concrete support than the simple arched doorway at right which was also created in the same way.

This is one of those techniques that made me say Eureka! Why didn’t I think of that! Meanwhile arches have been made in this fashion for hundreds of years here in Mexico and even earlier in Spain.

Next: Be sure to come back to read the next part in our series: Brick: Lakeside’s Cornerstone, Part 4 Domes and Vaults.