Silly bonded Beam Question

[dwayrynen]

Please forgive me, I'm a computer engineer, not a civil engineer... :-)

I'm planning on building a CMU fence wall per my city standards, and they specify a rebar bonded beam on top of the wall.

The guidelines also call for the 4' OC vertically reinforced columns to be filled with mortar.

So far, so good. I understand the requirements.


But when perusing my local Lowes and Home Depot to build my pricing spreadsheet, the Bonded Beam blocks all have hollow bases - ie to fill the bonded beam up, I'd have to fill up the columns beneath the bonded beam, which means the whole wall would be filled.

Is there a secret here? Are Lowes and Home Depot trying to get me to buy more motar or are there bonded beam blocks that have solid bottoms?

:-)

Darin

[Rich]

Not sure about the hidden agendas of Lowes or Home Depot but there are solid bottomed bond beam blocks that you can buy. You would probably be better off finding a local masonry supplier to buy the blocks from. Most likely they'll be cheaper too. For the 4' O.C. mortar filled columns you can simply knock the bottoms out of the bond beams in order to fill.

[Shanley]

Buy Knock-out Bond Beam block from a Masonry supply store. These block have tabs that you knock out to create the bond beam, hence the name. Use the tabs to seal the open bottoms of the void (nonfilled) cells. Place the tab flat at the bottom of the block and seal with a trowell full of mortar. The open bottoms allow your vertical reinforcement from your footing to penetrate the bond beam which ties the wall together. Use horizontal reinforcing (Durowall) every other course.