24 May 2011

Pitman's Vol 8 - Isolated Piers


Front Cover of Volume 8
Building Educator
Volume 8


by R Greenhalgh (Ed)

Published by Pitman & Sons Ltd
22nd January 1927

No ISBN number

Extract from pages 373-374
Isolated Piers
Receiving no support from abutting walls, these need to be of a greater sectional area than connected piers

Their height is relative to their sectional area, owing to brickwork's liability to buckle under its own weight, as well as the applied load


1-brick wide Pillar
drawn by Anne July 11
A 10ft high pier will only carry half the weight that it would carry if it was only 1ft in height

Stock brickwork crushes under a load of about 30 tons per sq.ft. Half this load will cause failure by cracking, which would eventually destroy the structure

A safe load would be one-fifth of that which causes fracture, and one-half of this result for a pier 10 ft. in height
The vertical joints in brick piers are a decided source of weakness, much of which can be eliminated by the skill and knowledge of the bricklayer in arranging his bond to produce the greatest strength, and by using a reasonably strong cement mortar.


1½-brick wide Pillar
drawn by Anne July 11
The foundations for brick piers are generally the same as for walls, the spread of the footings being equal to twice the least thickness of the pier

But this also depends upon the load it is called upon to support

An easy rule for calculating the number of courses of footings is;

One course of footings for every half- brick in the thickness of the wall and the bottom course of the footings is twice the thickness
For example, a 1-brick wall has two half-bricks in its thickness, therefore there will be two courses of footings, and the bottom course will be two bricks wide


2-brick wide Pillar
drawn by Anne July 11
A 2-brick wall has four half-bricks; there will be four courses of footings, the bottom course being four bricks wide

Each course of footings is set back ¼-brick from the face of the course below, forming a series of steps on each side of the wall. These steps are called offsets

No isolated pier should be built higher than ten to twelve times its least diameter





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