Another Clerihew makes it 30

Architect Christopher Wren
redesigned London when
it took a forceful maverick
from ashes hence London brick.

The last brick

Nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine brick:
This last one should do the trick.
I think it will, I think it might
I just have to place it right.

Clerihew

Francis Straub from Pennsylvania
In 1913 had his mania.
He used cinders ‘round the clock
when he invented cinderblock.

She's a brick. House.

When you slam the door to a wooden house

The whole thing shudders just a little

If you pound the door to see who’s home

The whole thing shakes just a little

Sounds and thumps and bumps and shivers

Reverberate and underpin a weaker state

In any wooden home or shop or store.

But a stone or brick or masonry home is

Solid as Ella Fitzgerald.

High and dry

Masonry arches for making roofs
Covered with timbers again and again
Proving again these basic truths
Stone stops fire, wood stops rain.

A masonry arch alone is strong
For centuries it’s not weak
Stone alone will last so long
But is all too prone to leak.

Cathedrals and churches use a roof
both inside arches made of stone
and outside wood and waterproof
Stone stops fire, dry as bone.

This old tested proven approach
Still works well, still today
Another topic for us to broach
Of thermal mass and its way

To keep a building truly warm
Helps if there is radiant heat
Stored in rock or stony form
For this to work, is a feat

Insulating the outside’s needed
For allowing radiant heat to pass
To the inside unimpeded
Bare stone inside: thermal mass.

Fresh water and masonry

People are worried for the future
For themselves, their son or daughter
You may not have enough to suit your
Own and offspring’s need for water.

Rising seas and melting glaciers
Means there’s less than you think
The near future to face yours
Looking for good water to drink

Desalination can use the sea
To make that salty water sweet
But it takes much energy
And pollution we must beat

Far too polluting and unsustainable
So another way is sought
To make fresh water obtainable
So our best ideas are brought

And if a concrete masonry sphere
With very high compressive strength
Is sunk to depth then it is clear
It is an acceptable length

To harvest water through a filter
Using free high pressure of the deep
A concrete sphere, once I built her
To collect that filtered seep

Of freshly filtered sweet clear water
Collected for almost free
For your son or your daughter
If we should do it why can’t we?

Of Circles and Erkels

The strength of an arch is not only found
In a half circle structure over your head
It is also found deep underground
It even occurs deep under seabed.

For an arch is one of those configurations
In a circular tube in a deep long tunnel
Its strength is used to join two separate nations
Like England and France are joined by the Chunnel.

Compression still works in a completed circle
It’s pressed on itself all the way round
You needn’t be a nerd or an Erkel
To know that the arch is the strongest found.