Clinker / Dutch clinker / Hand-fired clinker

Hello,

we want to build with clinker facade.
However, we do not want the completely smooth, identical-looking bricks but rather the somewhat more "rustic" ones.

In a conversation, we were told that the latter are "hand-formed" bricks, while the others are fired at a higher temperature.
The hand-fired ones, as far as I understood correctly, are also referred to as "Dutch clinker".
Is that correct?

Apart from the appearance, the main difference is especially in how much water the bricks can absorb.
Hard-fired clinker hardly absorbs any water (< 2%?), while the hand-fired ones can absorb up to 15%, depending on the type.

The older generation in my environment always tells me, "just don't take Dutch clinker, they absorb water." In the trade, I was told that this is no longer the case.

We imagine something like this:

Yes, the hand-burned Dutch
were installed by my parents in the 70s, with an internal joint (I don't know the technical term for that)
It still looks good, nothing is wet or how should one understand that?

Best regards in brief

Look at Egernsund bricks. There, for example, Indian Summer, water absorption 0.

So it is true that the hand-formed bricks are also called Dutch bricks. I was told that up to 10% is also not a problem, as long as the wall is not constantly wet (e.g., due to no roof overhang).

However, I doubt 0% water absorption. I was told that hard-fired bricks also have 5-6% or less.

On the page of Egernsund (company headquarters and exhibition in Egernsund, Denmark), you can view product data for each brick; for "Wasseraufnahme" there is an empty field. This information is therefore missing, and I do not believe it means 0%.

Now I have one more question. We looked at brick samples in the exhibition and flipped through some catalogs. After the name of an interesting brick, we then searched on the internet to find photos of entire houses.

A pattern may consist of bricks in different colors.

For the same brick pattern, we find several houses that look quite different. Is that due to the batch, or can the proportion of a certain brick in the pattern be varied, e.g., that fewer dark bricks and more of the light bricks are to be used?

Does each differently colored brick have its own palette, or are the different colors already mixed on the delivered palettes? Can the mixture generally be influenced, or would that possibly depend on the manufacturer?

Hello,

If I were you, I wouldn’t get hung up on the question of water absorption and the terminology is almost irrelevant. Ultimately, all reasonable bricks, Dutch bricks, hand-formed cladding bricks and whatever else are suitable for your house construction.

The cladding bricks come mixed together on pallets. You have no influence on the composition. In case of doubt, you should choose a mix that is less colorful. The appearance of the finished facade depends heavily on the color of the joints, but also on the weather.