What are ‘Brick Slips’?
Brick slips, sometimes known as ‘thin bricks’ or ‘brick cladding’ are thin tiles used to create the appearance of brickwork. They can be made from a variety of materials including clay, concrete or plastic each having their own properties.
Brick slips have been sold commercially for about fifty years but have become a mainstream product due to the drive towards modular lightweight construction.
How we manufacture brick slips
We manufacture clay slips in the same manner as traditional brick. This creates products that are colour safe, fire resistant and have less impact on the environment than cut brick slips.
Clay brick slips are created by cutting the face off a full brick or they can be ‘purpose made’. We make purpose made clay slips on our moulding, extrusion and dry pressing machines.
We also cut bricks on our water cooled saws to supply brick slips to match another manufacturers product or to supply reclaimed slips.
Once they have been made they can be bonded to a variety of substrates using brick slip adhesives.
We are the largest UK purpose made brick slip manufacturer.
Purpose made brick slips have a few major advantages compared to cutting slips from existing bricks.
Sustainability
Our purpose made clay brick slips have an average 70% less embodied carbon than single faced cut slips just in terms of firing them.
Matclad produces virtually no waste in our process and nearly all process waste is re-used during manufacture. There is also less water consumption per slip due to the products thin profile when you compare with cut slips.
We use 100% recycled wooden pallets and recyclable cardboard boxes to package and ship our slips.
We use small amounts of plastic but as a responsible supplier we are looking to introduce biodegradable plastic substitutes.
Cost effective brick slips
As you can see in our brick slip product range the average cost of a square meter of purpose made brick slips is about 30-50% more cost effective than cut slips. This is all down to the labour and energy savings made during manufacture.
Fire proof
Matclad clay slips are non-flammable because they are ceramic just like real bricks and we fire them to over 1000ºC.
The information provided by Matclad Limited ("we", "us", "our") on www.matclad.co.uk (the "Site") is for general informational purposes only. All information on the Site is provided in good faith, however we make no representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, availability or completeness of any information on the Site.
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Julie Pugh says:
What is the thickness of your slips please
Paul says:
Hello Julie,
The thickness of each product is stated on the product page under “Additional Information” but in short they are typically 15 or 20mm thick. We can make different thicknesses but these are typical in brick slip manufacture.
Hope this helps and sorry for the delayed reply.
Kind regards,
Paul
David says:
Hi.
What type of adhesive do you use and, how permeable are the brick slips to the worst the British weather can throw at a south west facing wall, that’s less than 2 miles from the coast?
Also, are the slips ultimately “pointed” in position, with a water proof mortar?
Thanks.
Paul says:
David,
Sorry for late reply.
In short if the substrate is porous then you can use a cementitious based adhesive i.e. a rapidset flexible wall tile adhesive however you must read the datasheet for the adhesive to make sure a) it is suitable for external use and b) if any other additives are needed in order to meet the manufacturers requirements for external use.~
The slips we manufacture (not the ‘reclaimed’ slip) are typically less than 8% for or 6% and are therefore fully frost resistant (BSEN 771-F2). The reclaims, due to us not being the original manufacturer, are of unknown frost resistance and ‘commons’ in general were never meant to be used externally.
Hope this helps and if you need to discuss in greater detail please call the office on 01978 291133