Supplier for clinker bricks wanted - Röben, Hagemeister, etc.

A regional tip from the Elbe:

We have a rustic cladding made from a regional, very small and historic ring kiln brickworks - the last one on the Elbe (Rusch Klinker, model "Elbmarsch") at the modern house. Back then, these (once 130) brickworks along the Elbe supplied half of Hamburg. Today they have long waiting times. It's just not mass production.

Every brick is unique, irregular, partly with distinct coal firing marks. It is wonderfully beautiful in nature and stands out extremely positively in the new development area through its natural harmony in my opinion.

Efflorescence appears on all the bricks more or less (especially with a roll layer as a window sill, which is nicer and quieter than an aluminum window sill), but brushing is gentler in the long run than the quick acid treatment.

A significantly larger regional manufacturer on the Elbe would be Glückstädter Klinker.

That is initially not an alternative.

On what grounds?

In general, I find very little on the topic of clinker / facing bricks to prepare myself.

What do you want to prepare for, are you dreaming of doing it yourself (which I would not recommend at all if inexperienced)?

but even there honest information was rare.

What kind of "honest" information: the things are cuboid and you get them from cream-white to black-violet ...

We obtain the facing bricks through the building materials dealer of the developer. The selection of manufacturers is large - but we do not get used bricks there. Certainly, it is an alternative to procure them ourselves and then have them billed, but we would only do that if we cannot find anything suitable. Am I overestimating the decision regarding the stone itself? Then we can only make the decision based on appearance. The preparation and the information were related to the various manufacturers. I have absolutely no idea how the different stones differ, what advantages and disadvantages different manufacturing methods have, and what points we should pay attention to when purchasing besides the appearance.

Clinker bricks are generally not optimized for thermal insulation but for weather resistance, and are therefore primarily an aesthetic building material. Color vibrancy can be achieved in two ways: on the one hand by mixing batches of pieces from different production lots, and on the other hand by deliberately creating irregularities within the firing process (using flame treatment or similar). Fundamental surface differences can be achieved through hand molding, sandblasting, or similar techniques.

In my opinion, the "normal format" (NF) is recommended as the format; regional formats not aligned with the construction standard size are correspondingly more difficult to lay.

In general, one unfortunately has to say that the quality of the overall impression nowadays often suffers from sloppy workmanship – the issue of improperly executed joint patterns by learned masons has come up several times here recently (search term: Fugenglattstrich - )

Pre-laying a clinker brick facing is an underestimated labor-intensive task. Simplifying, I would say: if the surcharge sounds surprisingly cheap, the result will also appropriately mock the price.

Thank you for your detailed response.

I hope and believe that we will not have any problems with the processing. I have already heard that in some areas in Germany it is really a problem to find suitable companies to carry out this work. However, this is hardly conceivable in the Bremen surrounding area. It feels like 8 out of 10 houses here are clad with bricks.

Both the masonry work and the grouting is done by personnel who are directly employed by the construction company and perform this work weekly.

We have now arranged an appointment with the building materials supplier and will have various alternatives shown to us. Afterwards, we will try to get reference addresses because you can’t tell how it will look in the end from the sample panels (like in the attached picture) anyway. Maybe then we will also have the chance to determine the next step – the joint color.

Then we will try to get reference addresses

Yes, as a layperson one easily misjudges the effect on a large scale. In your sample panel example image, the joints all seem to me to be filled too high. Take reference addresses where the same contractor has worked - so not from the building material dealer with a different contractor.

Maybe then we also have the chance to determine the next step - the joint color.

In my opinion, the joint color should be "seen in the system": considering the color of the roof tiles, the window frames, and the windowsills.