Course Height

Course height determines how many courses it takes to reach a given wall height, and masons use it to plan window and door openings, cap heights, and how a wall is going to line up with existing brick or block when tying into older construction on the same building. Keeping course height consistent up an entire wall depends on keeping bed joint thickness consistent from one course to the next, since even small variation in joint thickness compounds over dozens of courses into a wall that visibly leans or drifts out of level. A story pole marked with the planned course height is one of the tools masons use to keep every course honest as the wall goes up. Different brick and block sizes produce different course heights for the same nominal wall thickness, which is one more reason course height has to be worked out before, not during, construction.

Matching course height matters most on repair and addition work, where new brick or block has to line up seam for seam with courses that were laid decades earlier using a different unit size or joint thickness than what's made today. We measure the existing course height on site before ordering any material, so a repair, an addition, or a chimney tie-in reads as one continuous wall built at one time, not two mismatched sections stacked together. That kind of matching takes more planning upfront, but it's what keeps a repair from standing out as an obvious patch on an otherwise original wall.