What are the different types of walls? The difference between load -bearing walls, tamponing and plays

When it comes to walls present inside a building, trivially in our homes, you can easily go into confusiongiven the quantity of names and types of elements with which you can have to deal with: bearing walls, Partition walls, tamponing And whoever has more And things get complicated if we begin to enter even more into the technician. Although downstream of the realization of the finishes, such as the plaster, all the walls tend to have it same aspect – and therefore perhaps the same role – actually each name used identifies a difference that exists between the various types of wall: starting from these differences in nomenclature, in this article we illustrate their functioning within the building body.

In relation to the role that a specific vertical element plays in the structural complex, we can categorize the walls that make up a generic building in three large families:

• Bearing walls o walls/septa: they support the vertical and horizontal loads of the building
• Tamponing o Timatti: they create the border between the interior of a building and the external environment
• Plot o dividing walls: the internal environments of a house restart

The main walls

A wall can be defined as bearing when it fulfills a specific structural function in the building body. This structural function may concern both loads vertical (i.e. the wall is able to offer resistance to the weights transmitted by the floors) than those horizontal (i.e. offers resistance against the effects of the earthquake or wind actions). In practice, a bearing wall for vertical load purposes will be practically made of masonry (i.e. bricks/stones and mortar), although they hardly build today. Instead, for purposes relating to horizontal actions, a wall can also be designed and made of reinforced concrete. Brites and pillars are instead the most used elements, in reinforced concrete, steel or wood, to replace the task of a masonry bearing vertical loads.

When dealing with reinforced concrete walls, in technical jargon we talk about Sets or walls. The thicknesses of these elements are usually in the order of 20-30cm. In the case of masonry bearing walls, made with stones or bricks, usually full, you can reach and even overcome the sides of the metro. Cases of supporting walls made with Porized bricksthat is, lightened with voids. These solutions are usually confined to cases where the building system is developed in height on a few floors.

The buffering

We talk about tamponing (or buffer walls) when it refers to those walls that materialize the separation casing of the internal environments of a building from the external ones. The buffering they are not the load -bearing wallsas their task is not to support applied loads on their head. In fact, the Structural Frame shirt takes care of that, which must therefore be simultaneously present together with the pad! However, it should be emphasized that the they still perform a passive structural functionwhich is emphasized in the case of seismic events: tamponing participate in the structural response in the event of an earthquake. In some cases, their presence can generate structural irregularities that at the same time become the cause of serious damage or even collapses, as happened in the events of the earthquake in Türkiye last 2023.

The thicknesses of the buffa – about 30 /40cm, therefore in some cases in some cases comparable to those of the load -bearing walls – are necessary For acoustic and thermal purposesas these walls guarantee isolation and protection of internal environments from external ones. The “package” that composes the collision and which fulfills a specific thermo-acoustic requirements is the subject of a dedicated project. In fact, therefore, the swab is made up of various materials, whose coupled with specific thicknesses guarantees the desired project requirements. The most used solutions in Italy provide for the use of perforated brickswith any intertwining of air and layers of insulating material. Nowadays, it is also proposed towards the use of particular plasterboard elements, which many times also guarantee acoustic insulation requirements or more performing fire resistance of common bricks.

Bottles or dividing walls

We talk about plot When it refers to all walls of distribution of the internal environments of a house. These walls, also not structural and therefore not bearing, are reduced with respect to the tamponing and have only the task of separating the spaces in line with the architectural project. In this case, there is talk of thicknesses of the order of 10, 20 cm, however lower than the tamping thicknesses. The crew technologies of the sandwiches are varied: weaves can be made with Classic brick bricksor use solutions that prefer theUse of plasterboardvery popular in recent years.