A 1972 building may or may not have mortar as strong as today. Make sure you're not creating a hard pocket in the wall that will bust the existing blocks.
How big is your hole to infill? And why are you infilling it, like Mike asked?
CMU infills are for architectural reasons, walls been infilled are not part of the lateral resisting system (only out of plane lodas)
Openings are 8.5'Hx7'W and 7'Hx28'W
Given the uncertainties in the exisitng cmu surrounding the openings, would it make sense to demo top and bottom of openings are build a new CMU wall spaning from floor to roof?
Don't worry about the strength of the mortar since the over-all wall is currently adequate structurally.
The first appendix item of ASTM C90 for mortar recommends using the weakest mortar possible to carry the loads (stronger mortars sacrifice other properties) which would be minimal unless additional loads were created by making "hard/strong" sections in the wall that attract loads.
As a guess, Types N or S mortars would be adequate, but Type M would be unlikely.
Dick
Engineer and international traveler interested in construction techniques, problems and proper design.
Hi, dredging up this thread I just came across, I need to fill in several CMU walls for architectural reasons (typically about 10'x10' openings in a 27' tall 8" CMU grouted wall). My question is: what is the actual procedure to tie the new in-fill wall in at all four sides (or do you not tie into the top?).
I don't know if I'm lacking imagination or if this is really tricky to do. I can see embedding bond beam bars each side, and vertical bars into my footing, but how do you slide blocks in and still tie steel to the bottom course of the existing lintel above?
Do I not need to bother with that, considering this will not be a shear wall? Still, how do I grout cells and finish the top course? Any pointing in the right direction would be appreciated.
