Made by the Portland Cement Association, BUILDING WITH CONCRETE MASONRY shows the process by which buildings can be made with concrete masonry walls. The film dates to the mid-to-late 1940s. It begins with images shot on a farm, where concrete blocks are used for sanitary reasons for animal husbandry, and for storage of farm machinery. At 3:50, an International Harvester farm implement showroom is shown, with streamline design. At 4:28, a concrete masonry plant is shown. At 5:30, a few experienced masons are shown at work, with proper techniques shown throughout. Mortar is shown being made at 10:20, and at 12:30 the technique used to frame windows and doors is shown. At 15:20, different wall finishes are shown, with a close look at the joints to show the wall treatments possible through technique. At 15:50, the painting of concrete masonry walls is shown with paint powder being used. At 17:30, brick is shown being backed with 1/4″ concrete blocks.
The concrete masonry unit (CMU) shown in the film is a standard size rectangular block used in building construction. Those that use cinders (fly ash or bottom ash) are called cinder blocks in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand, breeze blocks (breeze is a synonym of ash) in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and hollow blocks in the Philippines. In Australia they are also known as Besser blocks or besser bricks, because the American-based Besser Company was a major supplier of concrete-block-making machinery. Clinker blocks use clinker as aggregate. In non-technical usage, the terms cinder block and breeze block are often generalized to cover all of these varieties.
Concrete block, when built in tandem with concrete columns and tie beams and reinforced with rebar, is a very common building material for the load-bearing walls of buildings, in what is termed concrete block structure (CBS) construction. American suburban houses typically employ a concrete foundation vibrant and slab with a concrete block wall on the perimeter. Large buildings typically use copious amounts of concrete block; for even larger buildings, concrete blocks supplement steel I-beams.[citation needed]
Concrete masonry can be used as a structural element in addition to being used as an architectural element. Ungrouted, partially grouted, and fully grouted walls are the different types of walls allowed. Reinforcement bars can be used both vertically and horizontally inside the CMU to strengthen the wall and results in better structural performance. The cells in which the rebar is placed must be grouted for the bars to bond to the wall. For this reason, high seismic zones typically only allow fully grouted walls in their building codes. The American design code that guides design engineers in using CMU as a structural system is the Masonry Standards Joint Committee’s Building Code Requirements & Specification for Masonry Structures (TMS 402/ACI 530/ASCE 5). The compressive strength of concrete masonry units and masonry walls varies from approximately 1,000 psi (7 MPa) to 5,000 psi (34 MPa) based on the type of concrete used to manufacture the unit, stacking orientation, the type of mortar used to build the wall, and other factors.
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