Saturday 13 April 2019

First installation of retrofitted S Bricks

These are the first pictures of retrofitted S Bricks. The S Brick is particularly suited for retrofit as it spans just one course of bricks, and, normally is confined to the outer leaf and the cavity, though this first installation was slightly different.

John Hunt in Northants already has Swifts breeding in a Zeist and a Model 30 on his gable, so he decided to give the S Brick a go. The boxes are at a level where there is an unheated room, and John wanted access to the boxes from the inside.  As the S Brick is made on a laser cutter, it can be tailored to fit the space available, so it was easy to adjust the depth of the box to bridge the cavity and inner leaf. In this case, the cavity was 60mm, so extra floor area needed to be found somehow. The floor area is 475 sq cm and headroom is 80mm, quite a bit larger than our successful experimental swift bricks

Although essentially straightforward, it was not as easy as it should have been because of a measurement miscommunication, a sliver of brick required trimming with an angle grinder.

Normally the back of the S Brick is closed, but we cut a rectangular hole to allow for a removable door. It also allows for a perspex back and a camera in due course.

S Brick with brick slip cast out of sand and cement.
Note clear labelling of Top (and Bottom)

S Brick rear view showing the nest form.The open back was a tailored feature for this implementation.

2 S Bricks installed. A reasonable colour match was achieved with some red dye.

Distant view of gable

Internal view of installed S Brick with Velcro surround
Backs installed

#sbox

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