Join Steve Easley as he takes a tour of an ACME brick plant in Texas.
Did you know man has been building with bricks for over ten thousands of years?
Transcript:
Steve Easley: Did you know that man has been building with bricks for over 10,000 years, and in America we use over eight billion bricks a year? Well today, we're gonna go look and see how these bricks are made. The ACME Brick Company built this state-of-the-art factory in Millsap, Texas for a reason. It sets only a few hundred yards from this massive clay pit filled with the best raw materials on earth for building quality brick. ACME president, Ed Stout, says the company has been mining in this area for more than 100 years and they've got at least another 100 to go. Well Ed, we're down here in your mining pit. Tell me a little bit about what type of materials you gotta have to make good brick.
Ed Stout: Well, this plant is fortunate to be sitting on top of a massive deposit of what's known as Pennsylvania age shale. This material was under the bottom of ocean for many years. In fact, this material's about 280 million years old.
Is that right?
When it's laid down and we uncover it, it, it's like a rock. It's very, very dense. Uh, give you an example of that, take a look at the material you have holding in your hand there and...
Oh, that's hard.
you cannot break that.
Yeah.
But, it's been buried for so many millions of year, but when we take it out of the ground and expose it to oxygen it begins to oxidize and this material that you can't break with a hammer...here's an example of chunk here that came out of the ground. Just look what happens to it when you...
You can't even pick it up.
That's right.
It's uh, it just crumbles before your very...
Now we take that same material and we take it into the plant and further process it to make it to the correct particle size to produce brick.
To get the clay to the correct particle size, a grinding machine at the plant really pulverizes it into a fine dust. Conveyor belts then carry the clay to this machine called a pug tub where all the impurities and debris are removed. Electronic probes determine if more water is needed to keep it properly tempered. The clay is then compacted in an extreme vacuum to remove all the air bubbles. It comes out of the extruder in a long continuous column.
Feel that column and feel the temperature. That temperature is just from the pressure of extrusion.
Amazing how warm it is.
There's no heat added at all and feel the, the hardness of it. That's uh...we run about a 4.2, 4.3 penetrometer, which is extremely dense, hard columns, which add to the quality of the product, gives you an opportunity to have a top grade brick.
The slabs are then cut into smaller sections as they head toward the final blocking machine that will cut them into individual bricks. Machines then separate and stack the bricks. The stacks are then placed on huge motorized palettes and the bricks are slowly driven into the kiln for firing. And believe me folks, this is one very long and very hot oven. It's the length of two football fields and it burns at temperatures up to 2,000 degrees. Take a look inside this peephole. The bricks will stay inside this inferno for two days. Like most of the plant, the kiln is computer controlled and very efficient. Now how much energy does it uh, take to uh, make brick?
Well it varies from different plant. This plant, we're under 4,000 uh, BTU per 1,000 brick, about 3,800 currently. We have plants, though, that are under 2,500, 2,100-2,200 BTUs per 1,000 brick produced.
That's uh, so much less than what I ever imagined. I mean, I can buy 100,000 BTUs from my gas company for about 50 cents, and the energy, 4,000 BTUs is...that's less than the energy I might lose out of my windows in a couple of hours on a cold day.
Bricks are a very energy-efficient product to produce. It really is. It uh,...compared to steel or other products, it's uh, it's very miserly.
But there's nothing miserly about the number of bricks they produce at this plant - 65 million per year and they all carry a 100 year guarantee.
If you...if you ever wanna check a brick and not have a lab at your disposal, just give it a little (tap). It sounds like two pieces of steel. You can do it. Even you can do that.
I can do that.
That is a good quality brick.
We're gonna go back to the pit now so I can calm all concerns about the environment. They're gonna be digging here for at least another 30 years, but they have big plans for this big hole in the ground. Feast your eyes on this picturesque crystal clear lake. This was the original pit ACME started mining more than 100 years ago. Now it's a wildlife sanctuary and the catfish have me just itching to wet a hook.
