INSPECTION OF PAVING BRICK.
In taking up the subject of inspection of paving brick it must be ad mitted that inspection is generally an unsatisfactory topic to both con tractor and municipality. Inspection is a difficult task requiring skilled judgment, expert knowledge, intelligent action, and ability of no mean order, as well as the qualities of tact, balance and horse sense. Men having these qualities and available for this purpose are rare. It is not so much that the politician desires to appoint a favored citizen or that the residents on a street feel that one of their number will best serve their interests. The municipal administrative officer will usually gladly waive these considerations if an inspector of the ideal type can be found. But the work for an inspector is spasmodic, and the season is short, and his importance in the constructive world is not yet so well established that he receives a high salary; we must expect ideal inspectors to be rare. However, the first requisite of paving brick inspection is a level headed and wide-awake inspector, and it is to the interest of all con cerned that this class of men be developed.
Inspection involves a study of the brick put on the street. An in spector whose work came under my observation selected types of brick which he found—what he thought to be soft or hard or brown or brittle or red or black or what not—and made a lot of rattler tests and absorp tion tests to determine the relative place of these various types and to aid his judgment in the inspection. This is a step in the right direction. It illustrates what was meant by saying that tests and requirements should be useful in educating inspector and citizen and contractor.
The difficulties of inspection are increased by the way material is loaded on cars and piled on the streets. Good and poor are mixed to gether indiscriminately, even when the change of quality is apparent as the wagon is loaded. Lack of uniformity is the bane of paving brick. May not the manufacturer remedy this in part at least, and place the mediocre brick on streets which want cheap brick and selected brick on streets which are willing to pay for a serviceable article? Evidently the inspection of paving brick and the selection of the test brick form an important matter, and upon this depends, to a large extent. the quality of the brick used in the pavement. As it is an utter impossibility to test any considerable part of the brick, great care must be taken to select representative samples and samples which will show the variation of the materials To make severe requirements for the results of tests is only a part of the problem; the inspection must be efficient and thorough and wise in order that the results may be fair to both producer and consumer.
It is obvious, then, that in addition to the making of standard tests the work of supervision of the pavement must include a fair and definite method of securing sample brick, a fair and general method for standards of rejection, and a way of throwing out imperfect brick dur ing the time of laying the pavement and before the filler is applied. The work of inspection, then, may be divided into the following: (1) A gen eral inspection; (2) Rough culling of imperfect and inferior brick in pile and barrow; (3) A culling of inferior brick as they are about to be laid and immediately after they are laid. In the general inspection dif ferent car loads or loads of the same quality should be considered to gether. Samples representing as near as may be the average of the brick of a given lot should be made by a man skilled in such work. If any considerable number of a poorer grade are to be found in any lot, representative samples of these should be selected and tests made upon the selected brick. If the results of the tests of the average samples are not up to the requirements the whole lot of brick should be re jected. If the results of the poorer grade are also not up to the re quirements and this grade constitutes such a part of the whole lot that they are not likely to be culled carefully during laying, the lot should be rejected with the provision that they be culled and then reinspected. In case the poorer brick in a pile show great inferiority by their ap pearance it may be sufficient to permit workmen to cull the brick as they are loaded into barrows, but this arrangement is not usually very satisfactory. The culling of brick as they are laid in the street should be permitted only for such brick as show by their size, color, shape, or surface defects that they are inferior brick and there should be few enough of this class to enable satisfactory results to be obtained. With some makes of brick color or other appearance furnishes evidence of defect or of inferior grade, but in other makes little can be told by these methods and the quality can be established only by physical tests.