Acme Brick Field Trip

I took the boys on a field trip with the local homeschool association. We went to the Acme Brick Plant in Denton. Now I must be honest, when the information for this field trip came through on the email loop I thought "this is one we could skip", but then I remembered...boys - factory - exciting. So I signed us up. I am glad I did, I was as fascinated as the boys.

The brick factory was established in 1891.

The manufacturing plant. As Speedy B said..."It's just like the TV show 'Made in America'". The process seen here is just after the bricks were cut. All bricks are the same gray color until they are fired.
Here is a "car" of bricks coming out of the kiln. It takes 48 hours for the bricks to go through the drying room and the kiln. The wet bricks cannot go straight to the kiln or they will explode. The orange slit to the right of the bricks is the "firing" part of the kiln. At that point the temperature in the kiln is 2200 degrees. One car of bricks is enough bricks to complete two 1900-2000 square foot homes. As you can see, this load of bricks is the three hole variety. Three hole bricks are considered architecturally bricks and are used in the building of city buildings. They contain more clay than residential bricks. Their composition and size make them more structurally sound.

The brickyard. The Denton plant manufactures 12 million bricks a month. All of these bricks have already been sold and are waiting to go to their respective job sites.

The boys loved the field trip and learned quite a bit about the process. Smoda wore the headphones because inside the plant was rather loud.

Acme Brick Field Trip

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