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schroads

Question Regarding 1925 Home Construction

schroads
14 years ago

Hello Everyone:

This message board has been a godsend since we purchased our home in June. I have posted a couple of times regarding wood windows and boilers. The comments that I received were very helpful. Now I have a research question.

Our home is a 1925 four-square with some prairie elements. It is 2 1/2 stories with a stucco exterior. After poking around my house (including basement) and having an energy audit conducted, we have discovered that our home has the following construction. Concrete foundation with stucco exterior over top of NATCO bricks or NATCO cinderblocks with balloon framing between the NATCO bricks and the lath and plaster walls. The gap between the NATCO bricks and lathe looks to be about 1 1/2 inches to 2 inches. Our walls are roughly 10-12 inches thick from exterior to interior plaster.

My question is in regards to the NATCO bricks. I did some Internet searches and found some interesting brochures, magazines and booklets from the 1900-1920s about the NATCO bricks. However, I could not find anything out about their longevity or any current issues related to homes that used this bricks. Is anyone familar with these NATCO bricks? Are they considered higher quality or lower quality for construction at the time? We are thinking about having a new coat of stucco applied the house. The old stucco has been painted over and is beginning to crack, peel and chip. I wanted to see if there were any problems associated with the NATCO bricks before we had some stucco companies come by and give us estimates.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Schroads

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