What it is called, by market
One concept, four markets. Where a name means something else locally, the card says so rather than leaving you to find out on site.
United Kingdom
Same word, different thingbond
also stretcher bond, English bond, Flemish bond, header bond
A STRETCHER is a brick laid lengthways; a HEADER is one laid with its end showing. That is the original sense of header, and it is why the American use of the word for a lintel collides so badly here.
Australia
Close, not identicalbond
also stretcher bond, running bond, Flemish bond
British names in specifications, with running bond understood from American usage in everyday speech.
United Statesyours
Close, not identicalbond
also running bond, common bond, American bond, stack bond
RUNNING bond is the British stretcher bond. COMMON or American bond is stretcher courses with a header course at intervals, which British usage does not have as a single named pattern.
Canada
Close, not identicalbond
also running bond, stack bond, Flemish bond
As the United States, with stack bond — no overlap at all — used decoratively and requiring reinforcement in the joints because it has no bond in the structural sense.
The governing standard, by market
United Kingdom
BS EN 1996-1-1 / PD 6697
Design of masonry structures, and recommendations for bonding, overlap and the strength that depends on it.
United States
TMS 402 / ASTM C216
Masonry design including bond patterns and joint reinforcement for stack bond, and facing brick specification.
Calculators for this
Each works in either measurement system, and the terminology on the page follows whichever market you have selected.
Frequently asked questions
- What does a header actually do, and why is only one market's word for it ambiguous?
- In brickwork a header is a brick laid with its short end showing on the face, and in a solid wall it is laid ACROSS the thickness, tying the front of the wall to the back. That is what bonding a solid wall means: without headers the two faces are two separate skins standing beside each other, and the wall is far weaker than the sum of them. The word travelled into American framing to mean the beam over an opening, which is a completely different member — and that is why a British reader meeting header on an American drawing has to check which is meant. On a British drawing header means the brick, and a header tank is a cistern, and a header in pipework is a manifold. None of them spans an opening.
- Can you tell a solid wall from a cavity wall by looking at the bond?
- Usually, and it is the fastest external clue there is. A cavity wall's outer leaf is a single brick thick, so it can only be laid in stretchers — every brick lengthways, every course offset by half — which is stretcher or running bond. A solid wall has to be tied through its thickness, so it shows HEADERS: English bond alternates whole courses of stretchers and headers, Flemish bond alternates stretcher and header within each course. So a brick elevation showing no header bricks anywhere is almost certainly a cavity wall, and one showing a regular pattern of short brick ends is almost certainly solid. It is not infallible — snapped headers can be used decoratively on a cavity wall — but it is the first thing to look at, and it changes what can be assumed about insulation, damp and fixing into the wall.
- Why does stack bond need reinforcement when other bonds do not?
- Because it has no overlap, so it is not bonded at all in the structural sense. Every other pattern offsets the vertical joints between courses, which forces a crack or a load to travel a longer, interrupted path and lets the wall distribute stress sideways. Stack bond puts every vertical joint directly above the last, creating continuous unbroken lines from bottom to top — a ready-made crack path — and each column of bricks is effectively independent of the ones beside it. Codes respond by requiring reinforcement in the bed joints to do the job the overlap would have done. It is a useful illustration of what bond is FOR: the pattern is not decoration that happens to be structural, it is structure that happens to be visible.