Craft Quantities
Plan & Takeoffs

Cross-market term

Wall ties and veneer anchors

The metal components crossing the cavity between an outer and an inner leaf, transferring lateral load between them while carrying no vertical load and returning no water across the gap.
  • 4Markets
  • NoSame thing everywhere
  • 3Calculators

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

    Close, not identical

    wall tie

    also cavity tie, butterfly tie, double-triangle tie, housing tie

    Both leaves are usually structural, so the tie makes them act together against wind. Type and spacing come from a schedule set by cavity width, wall height and exposure.

  • Australia

    Close, not identical

    wall tie

    also cavity tie, brick tie, veneer tie

    Both patterns in use — a true cavity wall and a brick veneer over a timber or steel frame — so the term covers the British and the American case and the drawing has to say which.

  • United Statesyours

    Same word, different thing

    veneer anchor

    also brick tie, wall tie, corrugated tie, adjustable anchor

    A brick veneer is NOT structural: it hangs off the frame or the backup wall and carries only itself. The anchor restrains it laterally, and the corrugated strip commonly used has nothing like the stiffness of a cavity-wall tie.

  • Canada

    Same word, different thing

    veneer tie

    also brick tie, masonry anchor, wall tie

    As the United States under CSA, with corrosion-resistance requirements driven by a harsher freeze-thaw exposure.

The governing standard, by market

  • United Kingdom

    BS EN 845-1 / PD 6697

    Specification for wall ties, and recommendations for their type, spacing and embedment by cavity width and exposure.

  • United States

    TMS 402 Chapter 12 / ASTM A951

    Anchored veneer requirements, anchor spacing and area limits, and steel wire for masonry joint reinforcement.

Calculators for this

Each works in either measurement system, and the terminology on the page follows whichever market you have selected.

Brick Veneer Wall Tie Density Calculator →Cavity Wall Weep Hole Spacing Calculator →Brick Calculator →

Frequently asked questions

Is a brick tie the same as a wall tie?
The words are used interchangeably and the walls they belong to are not. A British cavity wall has TWO structural leaves, and the ties make them act as one against wind pressure — so the tie is a stiffness component, its type is selected against the cavity width and the exposure, and its spacing comes from a schedule. An American brick veneer is a single skin hung in front of a frame or a backup wall; it carries nothing but its own weight, and the anchor exists only to stop it falling away or being pushed in. That is why a corrugated strip is acceptable there and would be nowhere near adequate as a cavity-wall tie. Reading one market's spacing table into the other's wall is not conservative in either direction: it is answering a different structural question.
Why do wall ties fail, and what does it look like?
Corrosion, and it announces itself in a very specific way. A mild steel tie embedded in mortar rusts, and rust occupies several times the volume of the steel it came from — so the tie expands inside the bed joint and lifts the brickwork above it. Because ties sit at a regular vertical spacing, the result is HORIZONTAL cracking at regular intervals up the wall, commonly every few courses, sometimes with the outer leaf bulging outward as the cumulative lift adds up. That pattern is close to diagnostic: very little else produces regularly spaced horizontal cracks. It is a particular concern in walls of the era when ties were mild steel with a thin coating, and it is why modern ties are stainless.
Why does the tie have a drip or a twist in the middle?
To stop it carrying water across the cavity, which is the whole point of having a cavity. Water crossing the outer leaf runs down the inside face of it, and anything bridging the gap gives that water a path to the inner leaf — so the tie is shaped to break the path: a twist, a kink, or a formed drip at the centre makes the water gather and fall rather than track along. It also has to be installed the right way up and sloping very slightly toward the OUTER leaf, and it must be kept clear of mortar droppings, because a tie buried in a lump of mortar that spans the cavity is a bridge whatever shape it is. Cavity-wall damp that appears in a regular pattern up a wall is very often mortar on the ties rather than the ties themselves.