A wall is a structure and a surface that defines an area; carries a load; provides security, shelter, or soundproofing; or, is decorative. There are many kinds of walls, including:
Retaining walls, which hold back dirt, stone, water, or noise sound
Stone walls
Walls in buildings that form a fundamental part of the superstructure or separate interior rooms, sometimes for fire safety
Glass walls in which the primary structure is made of glass; does not include openings within walls that have glass coverings as these are windows
Walls that protect from oceans (seawalls) or rivers (levees)
Etymology
"weall," an Old English word for 'wall'
The term wall comes from the Latin vallum meaning "an earthen wall or rampart set with palisades, a row or line of stakes, a wall, a rampart, fortification", while the Latin word murus means a defensive stone wall.[1]English uses the same word to mean an external wall and the internal sides of a room, but this is not universal. Many languages distinguish between the two. In German, some of this distinction can be seen between Wand and Mauer, in Spanish between pared and muro.
The purposes of walls in buildings are to support roofs, floors and ceilings; to enclose a space as part of the building envelope along with a roof to give buildings form; and to provide shelter and security. In addition, the wall may house various types of utilities such as electrical wiring or plumbing. Wall construction falls into two basic categories: framed walls or mass-walls. In framed walls the load is transferred to the foundation through posts, columns or studs. Framed walls most often have three or more separate components: the structural elements (such as 2×4 studs in a house wall), insulation, and finish elements or surfaces (such as drywall or panelling). Mass-walls are of a solid material including masonry, concrete including slipform stonemasonry, log building, cordwood construction, adobe, rammed earth, cob, earthbag construction, bottles, tin cans, straw-bale construction, and ice. Walls may or may not be leadbearing. Walls are required to conform to the local building and/or fire codes.
There are three basic methods walls control water intrusion: moisture storage, drained cladding, or face-sealed cladding.[2] Moisture storage is typical of stone and brick mass-wall buildings where moisture is absorbed and released by the walls of the structure itself. Drained cladding also known as screened walls[3] acknowledges moisture will penetrate the cladding so a moisture barrier such as housewrap or felt paper inside the cladding provides a second line of defense and sometimes a drainage plane or air gap allows a path for the moisture to drain down through and exit the wall. Sometimes ventilation is provided in addition to the drainage plane such as in rainscreen construction. Face-sealed also called barrier wall or perfect barrier[3] cladding relies on maintaining a leak-free surface of the cladding. Examples of face sealed cladding are the early exterior insulation finishing systems, structural glazing, metal clad panels, and corrugated metal.
Building walls frequently become works of art, externally and internally, such as when featuring mosaic work or when murals are painted on them; or as design foci when they exhibit textures or painted finishes for effect.
Precast walls are walls which have been manufactured in a factory and then shipped to where it is needed, ready to install. It is faster to install compared to brick and other walls and may have a lower cost compared to other types of wall. Precast walls are cost effective compare to Brick Wall compound wall.
Mullion walls are a structural system that carries the load of the floor slab on prefabricated panels around the perimeter.
Partition wall
Glass partition walls
A partition wall is a usually thin wall that is used to separate or divide a room, primarily a pre-existing one. Partition walls are usually not load-bearing, and can be constructed out of many materials, including steel panels, bricks, cloth, plastic, plasterboard, wood, blocks of clay, terracotta, concrete, and glass.
Some partition walls are made of sheet glass. Glass partition walls are a series of individual toughened glass panels mounted in wood or metal framing. They may be suspended from or slide along a robust aluminium ceiling track.[5] The system does not require the use of a floor guide, which allows easy operation and an uninterrupted threshold.
A timber partition consists of a wooden framework, supported on the floor or by side walls. Metal lath and plaster, properly laid, forms a reinforced partition wall. Partition walls constructed from fibre cement backer board are popular as bases for tiling in kitchens or in wet areas like bathrooms. Galvanized sheet fixed to wooden or steel members are mostly adopted in works of temporary character. Plain or reinforced partition walls may also be constructed from concrete, including pre-cast concrete blocks. Metal framed partitioning is also available. This partition consists of track (used primarily at the base and head of the partition) and studs (vertical sections fixed into the track typically spaced at 24", 16", or at 12").
Internal wall partitions, also known as office partitioning, are usually made of plasterboard (drywall) or varieties of glass. Toughened glass is a common option, as low-iron glass (better known as opti-white glass) increases light and solar heat transmission.
Wall partitions are constructed using beads and tracking that is either hung from the ceiling or fixed into the ground.[6] The panels are inserted into the tracking and fixed. Some wall partition variations specify their fire resistance and acoustic performance rating.
Movable partitions are walls that open to join two or more rooms into one large floor area. These include:
Sliding—a series of panels that slide in tracks fixed to the floor and ceiling, similar sliding doors
Sliding and folding doors —similar to sliding folding doors, these are good for smaller spans
Folding partition walls - a series of interlocking panels suspended from an overhead track that when extended provide an acoustical separation, and when retracted stack against a wall, ceiling, closet, or ceiling pocket.
Screens—usually constructed of a metal or timber frame fixed with plywood and chipboard and supported with legs for free standing and easy movement
Pipe and drape—fixed or telescopic uprights and horizontals provide a ground supported drape system with removable panels.
Party walls are walls that separate buildings or units within a building. They provide fire resistance and sound resistance between occupants in a building. The minimum fire resistance and sound resistance required for the party wall is determined by a building code and may be modified to suit a variety of situations. Ownership of such walls can become a legal issue. It is not a load-bearing wall and may be owned by different people.
Fire walls resist spread of fire within or sometimes between structures to provide passive fire protection. A delay in the spread of fire gives occupants more time to escape and fire fighters more time to extinguish the fire. Some fire walls allow fire resistive window assemblies,[7] and are made of non-combustible material such as concrete, cement block, brick, or fire rated drywall. Wall penetrations are sealed with fire resistive materials. A doorway in a firewall must have a rated fire door. Fire walls provide varying resistance to the spread of fire, (e.g., one, two, three or four hours). Firewalls can also act as smoke barriers when constructed vertically from slab to roof deck and horizontally from an exterior wall to exterior wall subdividing a building into sections.
Shear walls resist lateral forces such as in an earthquake or severe wind. There are different kinds of shear walls such as the steel plate shear wall.
Knee walls are short walls that either support rafters or add height in the top floor rooms of houses. In a 1+1⁄2-story house, the knee wall supports the half story.
Laminated particle board walls (this may also include other finishes, such as whiteboards, cork board, magnetic, etc., typically all on purpose-made wall studs)
On a ship, a wall that separates major compartments is called a bulkhead. A thinner wall between cabins is called a partition.
Boundary wall
Stone wall of an English barnA red bricks boundary wall intersection
Boundary walls include privacy walls, boundary-marking walls on property, and town walls. These intergrade into fences. The conventional differentiation is that a fence is of minimal thickness and often open in nature, while a wall is usually more than a nominal thickness and is completely closed, or opaque. More to the point, an exterior structure of wood or wire is generally called a fence—but one of masonry is a wall. A common term for both is barrier, which is convenient for structures that are partly wall and partly fence—for example the Berlin Wall. Another kind of wall-fence ambiguity is the ha-ha—which is set below ground level to protect a view, yet acts as a barrier (to cattle, for example).
An old Italian wall surrounded by flowers
Before the invention of artillery, many of the world's cities and towns, particularly in Europe and Asia, had defensive or protective walls (also called town walls or city walls). In fact, the English word "wall" derives from Latin vallum—a type of fortification wall. These walls are no longer relevant for defense, so such cities have grown beyond their walls, and many fortification walls, or portions of them, have been torn down—for example in Rome, Italy and Beijing, China. Examples of protective walls on a much larger scale include the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall.
Some walls formally mark the border between one population and another. A border wall is constructed to limit the movement of people across a certain line or border. These structures vary in placement with regard to international borders and topography. The most famous example of border barrier in history is probably the Great Wall of China, a series of walls that separated the Empire of China from nomadic powers to the north. The most prominent recent example is the Berlin Wall, which surrounded the enclave of West Berlin and separated it from East Germany for most of the Cold War era. The US-Mexico border wall, separating the United States and Mexico, is another recent example.
In areas of rocky soils around the world, farmers have often pulled large quantities of stone out of their fields to make farming easier and have stacked those stones to make walls that either mark the field boundary, or the property boundary, or both.
Retaining walls resist movement of earth, stone, or water. They may be part of a building or external. The ground surface or water on one side of a retaining wall is typically higher than on the other side. A dike is a retaining wall, as is a levee, a load-bearing foundation wall, and a sea wall.
Shared wall
Special laws often govern walls that neighbouring properties share. Typically, one neighbour cannot alter the common wall if it is likely to affect the building or property on the other side. A wall may also separate apartment or hotel rooms from each other. Each wall has two sides and breaking a wall on one side will break the wall on the other side.
Portable wall
Portable walls, such as room dividers or portable partitions divide a larger open space into smaller rooms. Portable walls can be static, such as cubicle walls, or can be wall panels mounted on casters to provide an easy way to reconfigure assembly space. They are often found inside schools, churches, convention centers, hotels, and corporate facilities.
Temporary wall
A temporary wall is constructed for easy removal or demolition. A typical temporary wall can be constructed with 1⁄2" (6mm) to 5⁄8" (16mm) sheet rock (plasterboard), metal 2 × 3s (approx. 5 × 7cm), or 2 × 4s, or taped, plastered and compounded. Most installation companies use lattice (strips of wood) to cover the joints of the temporary wall with the ceiling. These are sometimes known as pressurized walls or temporary pressurized walls.
Walls in popular culture
Walls are often seen in popular culture, oftentimes representing barriers preventing progress or entry. For example:
Fictional and symbolic walls
The progressive/psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd used a metaphorical wall to represent the isolation felt by the protagonist of their 1979 concept album The Wall.
In some cases, a wall may refer to an individual's debilitating mental or physical condition, seen as an impassable barrier.[citation needed]
In George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and its television adaptation, Game of Thrones, The Wall plays multiple important roles: as a colossal fortification, made of ice and fortified with magic spells; as a cultural barrier; and as a codification of assumptions. Breaches of the wall, who is allowed to cross it and who is not, and its destruction have important symbolic, logistical, and socio-political implications in the storyline. Reportedly over 700 feet high and 100 leagues (300 miles) wide, it divides the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms realm from the domain of the wildlings and several categories of undead who live beyond it.[8][9][10]
Historical walls
In a real-life example, the Berlin Wall, constructed by the Soviet Union to divide Berlin into NATO and Warsaw Pact zones of occupation, became a worldwide symbol of oppression and isolation.[11]
Social media walls
Another common usage is as a communal surface to write upon. For instance the social networking site Facebook previously used an electronic "wall" to log the scrawls of friends until it was replaced by the "timeline" feature.
A firewall is a fire-resistant barrier used to prevent the spread of fire. Firewalls are built between or through buildings, structures, or electrical substation transformers, or within an aircraft or vehicle.
A floor is the bottom surface of a room or vehicle. Floors vary from simple dirt in a cave to many layered surfaces made with modern technology. Floors may be stone, wood, bamboo, metal or any other material that can support the expected load.
Drywall is a panel made of calcium sulfate dihydrate (gypsum), with or without additives, typically extruded between thick sheets of facer and backer paper, used in the construction of interior walls and ceilings. The plaster is mixed with fiber ; plasticizer, foaming agent; and additives that can reduce mildew, flammability, and water absorption.
A curtain wall is an exterior covering of a building in which the outer walls are non-structural, instead serving to protect the interior of the building from the elements. Because the curtain wall façade carries no structural load beyond its own dead load weight, it can be made of lightweight materials. The wall transfers lateral wind loads upon it to the main building structure through connections at floors or columns of the building.
This page is a list of construction topics.
Insulating concrete form or insulated concrete form (ICF) is a system of formwork for reinforced concrete usually made with a rigid thermal insulation that stays in place as a permanent interior and exterior substrate for walls, floors, and roofs. The forms are interlocking modular units that are dry-stacked and filled with concrete. The units lock together somewhat like Lego bricks and create a form for the structural walls or floors of a building. ICF construction has become commonplace for both low rise commercial and high performance residential construction as more stringent energy efficiency and natural disaster resistant building codes are adopted.
Framing, in construction, is the fitting together of pieces to give a structure support and shape. Framing materials are usually wood, engineered wood, or structural steel. The alternative to framed construction is generally called mass wall construction, where horizontal layers of stacked materials such as log building, masonry, rammed earth, adobe, etc. are used without framing.
Canterbury railway station is a heritage-listed railway station located on the Bankstown line at Canterbury, New South Wales, Australia. The station is served by Sydney Trains T3 Bankstown line services. The station was designed by New South Wales Government Railways and built from 1895 to 1915 by J. J. Scouller. It is also known as Canterbury Railway Station group. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The development of this technique made the construction of the skyscraper possible. Steel frame has displaced its predecessor, the iron frame, in the early 20th century.
The Brisbane Showgrounds is a multi-purpose venue located in Bowen Hills, Brisbane. Established in 1875, it hosts more than 250 events each year, the largest being the Royal Queensland Show (Ekka).
A raised floor provides an elevated structural floor above a solid substrate to create a hidden void for the passage of mechanical and electrical services. Raised floors are widely used in modern office buildings, and in specialized areas such as command centers, Information technology data centers and computer rooms, where there is a requirement to route mechanical services and cables, wiring, and electrical supply. Such flooring can be installed at varying heights from 2 inches (51 mm) to heights above 4 feet (1.2 m) to suit services that may be accommodated beneath. Additional structural support and lighting are often provided when a floor is raised enough for a person to crawl or even walk beneath.
Fireproofing is rendering something resistant to fire, or incombustible; or material for use in making anything fire-proof. It is a passive fire protection measure. "Fireproof" or "fireproofing" can be used as a noun, verb or adjective; it may be hyphenated ("fire-proof").
Valley Heights railway station is a heritage-listed railway station located on the Main Western line in Valley Heights, in the City of Blue Mountains local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built by NSW Government Railways. It is also known as Valley Heights Railway Station and Locomotive Depot and The Valley. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
Precast concrete is a construction product produced by casting concrete in a reusable mold or "form" which is then cured in a controlled environment, transported to the construction site and maneuvered into place; examples include precast beams, and wall panels, floors, roofs, and piles. In contrast, cast-in-place concrete is poured into site-specific forms and cured on site.
Building insulation materials are the building materials that form the thermal envelope of a building or otherwise reduce heat transfer.
Keating House is a heritage-listed villa at 10–12 Westminster Road, Indooroopilly, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Richard Gailey and built c. 1890s. It is also known as Louis Stamm residence. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 28 May 1999.
Cannon Hill State School is a heritage-listed state school at 845 Wynnum Road, Cannon Hill, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 12 June 2015.
Muswellbrook Post Office is a heritage-listed post office at 7 Bridge Street, Muswellbrook, New South Wales, Australia. It was added to the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 08 November 2011.
Temora Post Office is a heritage-listed post office at 173 Hoskins Street, Temora, New South Wales, Australia. It was added to the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 8 November 2011.
Bundaberg Post Office is a heritage-listed post office at 155a Bourbong Street, Bundaberg Central, Bundaberg, Bundaberg Region, Queensland, Australia. It was added to the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 8 November 2011.
References
↑ "Wall". Whitney, William Dwight, and Benjamin E. Smith. The Century dictionary and cyclopedia, vol. 8. New York: Century Co., 1901. 6,809. Print.
↑ Committee on Damp Indoor Spaces and Health, Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Damp indoor spaces and health. Institute of Medicine, (U. S.). National Academies Press. Washington, D. C.. 2004. 34-35. Print.
1 2 Straube, J. F.and Burnett, E. F. P., "Driving Rain and Masonry Veneer". Water Leakage through Building Facades, ASTM STP 1314. R. J. Kudder and J. L. Erdly, Eds. American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), 1998. 75. Print.
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