Wall

A wall is a structure and a surface that defines an area; carries a load; provides security, shelter, or soundproofing; or, is decorative. There are many kinds of walls, including:

• Walls in buildings that form a fundamental part of the superstructure or separate interior rooms, sometimes for fire safety
• Glass walls (a wall in which the primary structure is made of glass; does not include openings within walls that have glass coverings: these are windows)
• Border barriers between countries
• Brick walls
• Defensive walls in fortifications
• Permanent, solid fences
• Retaining walls, which hold back dirt, stone, water, or noise sound
• Stone walls
• Walls that protect from oceans (seawalls) or rivers (levees)

Etymology

The term wall comes from Latin vallum meaning "...an earthen wall or rampart set with palisades, a row or line of stakes, a wall, a rampart, fortification..." while the Latin word murus means a defensive stone wall. English uses the same word to mean an external wall and the internal sides of a room, but this is not universal. Many languages distinguish between the two. In German, some of this distinction can be seen between Wand and Mauer, in Spanish between pared and muro.

Defensive wall

The word wall originally referred to defensive walls and ramparts.

Building wall

The purposes of walls in buildings are to support roofs, floors and ceilings; to enclose a space as part of the building envelope along with a roof to give buildings form; and to provide shelter and security. In addition, the wall may house various types of utilities such as electrical wiring or plumbing. Wall construction falls into two basic categories: framed walls or mass-walls. In framed walls the load is transferred to the foundation through posts, columns or studs. Framed walls most often have three or more separate components: the structural elements (such as 2×4 studs in a house wall), insulation, and finish elements or surfaces (such as drywall or panelling). Mass-walls are of a solid material including masonry, concrete including slipform stonemasonry, log building, cordwood construction, adobe, rammed earth, cob, earthbag construction, bottles, tin cans, straw-bale construction, and ice. Walls may or may not be leadbearing. Walls are required to conform to the local building and/or fire codes.

There are three basic methods walls control water intrusion: moisture storage, drained cladding, or face-sealed cladding. Moisture storage is typical of stone and brick mass-wall buildings where moisture is absorbed and released by the walls of the structure itself. Drained cladding also known as screened walls acknowledges moisture will penetrate the cladding so a moisture barrier such as housewrap or felt paper inside the cladding provides a second line of defense and sometimes a drainage plane or air gap allows a path for the moisture to drain down through and exit the wall. Sometimes ventilation is provided in addition to the drainage plane such as in rainscreen construction. Face-sealed also called barrier wall or perfect barrier cladding relies on maintaining a leak-free surface of the cladding. Examples of face sealed cladding are the early exterior insulation finishing systems, structural glazing, metal clad panels, and corrugated metal.

Building walls frequently become works of art, externally and internally, such as when featuring mosaic work or when murals are painted on them; or as design foci when they exhibit textures or painted finishes for effect.

Curtain wall

In architecture and civil engineering, curtain wall refers to a building facade that is not load-bearing but provides decoration, finish, front, face, or historical preservation.

Precast wall

Precast walls are walls which have been manufactured in a factory and then shipped to where it is needed, ready to install. It is faster to install compared to brick and other walls and may have a lower cost compared to other types of wall. Precast walls are cost effective compare to Brick Wall compound wall.

Mullion wall

Mullion walls are a structural system that carries the load of the floor slab on prefabricated panels around the perimeter.

Partition wall

A partition wall is a usually thin wall that is used to separate or divide a room, primarily a pre-existing one. Partition walls are usually not load-bearing, and can be constructed out of many materials, including steel panels, bricks, cloth, plastic, plasterboard, wood, blocks of clay, terracotta, concrete, and glass.

Some partition walls are made of sheet glass. Glass partition walls are a series of individual toughened glass panels mounted in wood or metal framing. They may be suspended from or slide along a robust aluminium ceiling track. The system does not require the use of a floor guide, which allows easy operation and an uninterrupted threshold.

A timber partition consists of a wooden framework, supported on the floor or by side walls. Metal lath and plaster, properly laid, forms a reinforced partition wall. Partition walls constructed from fibre cement backer board are popular as bases for tiling in kitchens or in wet areas like bathrooms. Galvanized sheet fixed to wooden or steel members are mostly adopted in works of temporary character. Plain or reinforced partition walls may also be constructed from concrete, including pre-cast concrete blocks. Metal framed partitioning is also available. This partition consists of track (used primarily at the base and head of the partition) and studs (vertical sections fixed into the track typically spaced at 24", 16", or at 12").

Internal wall partitions, also known as office partitioning, are usually made of plasterboard (drywall) or varieties of glass. Toughened glass is a common option, as low-iron glass (better known as opti-white glass) increases light and solar heat transmission.

Wall partitions are constructed using beads and tracking that is either hung from the ceiling or fixed into the ground. The panels are inserted into the tracking and fixed. Some wall partition variations specify their fire resistance and acoustic performance rating.

Movable partitions

Movable partitions are walls that open to join two or more rooms into one large floor area. These include:

• Sliding—a series of panels that slide in tracks fixed to the floor and ceiling, similar sliding doors
• Sliding and folding doors —similar to sliding folding doors, these are good for smaller spans
• Folding partition walls - a series of interlocking panels suspended from an overhead track that when extended provide an acoustical separation, and when retracted stack against a wall, ceiling, closet, or ceiling pocket.
• Screens—usually constructed of a metal or timber frame fixed with plywood and chipboard and supported with legs for free standing and easy movement
• Pipe and drape—fixed or telescopic uprights and horizontals provide a ground supported drape system with removable panels.

Party wall

Party walls are walls that separate buildings or units within a building. They provide fire resistance and sound resistance between occupants in a building. The minimum fire resistance and sound resistance required for the party wall is determined by a building code and may be modified to suit a variety of situations. Ownership of such walls can become a legal issue. It is not a load-bearing wall and may be owned by different people.

Infill wall

An infill wall is the supported wall that closes the perimeter of a building constructed with a three-dimensional framework structure.

Fire wall

Fire walls resist spread of fire within or sometimes between structures to provide passive fire protection. A delay in the spread of fire gives occupants more time to escape and fire fighters more time to extinguish the fire. Some fire walls allow fire resistive window assemblies, and are made of non-combustible material such as concrete, cement block, brick, or fire rated drywall. Wall penetrations are sealed with fire resistive materials. A doorway in a firewall must have a rated fire door. Fire walls provide varying resistance to the spread of fire, (e.g., one, two, three or four hours). Firewalls can also act as smoke barriers when constructed vertically from slab to roof deck and horizontally from an exterior wall to exterior wall subdividing a building into sections.

Shear wall

Shear walls resist lateral forces such as in an earthquake or severe wind. There are different kinds of shear walls such as the steel plate shear wall.

Knee wall

Knee walls are short walls that either support rafters or add height in the top floor rooms of houses. In a -story house, the knee wall supports the half story.

Cavity wall

Cavity walls are walls made with a space between two "skins" to inhibit heat transfer.

Pony wall

Pony wall (or dwarf wall) is a general term for short walls, such as:

• A half wall that only extends partway from floor to ceiling, without supporting anything
• A stem wall—a concrete wall that extends from the foundation slab to the cripple wall or floor joists
• A cripple wall—a framed wall from the stem wall or foundation slab to the floor joists

Demountable wall

Demountable walls fall into 3 different main types:

• Glass walls (unitesed panels or butt joint),
• Laminated particle board walls (this may also include other finishes, such as whiteboards, cork board, magnetic, etc., typically all on purpose-made wall studs)
• Drywall

Shipbuilding

On a ship, a wall that separates major compartments is called a bulkhead. A thinner wall between cabins is called a partition.

Boundary wall

Boundary walls include privacy walls, boundary-marking walls on property, and town walls. These intergrade into fences. The conventional differentiation is that a fence is of minimal thickness and often open in nature, while a wall is usually more than a nominal thickness and is completely closed, or opaque. More to the point, an exterior structure of wood or wire is generally called a fence—but one of masonry is a wall. A common term for both is barrier, which is convenient for structures that are partly wall and partly fence—for …