Builder's Engineer

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Masonry strips are rarely used these days, however they can be adopted where good quality sub-strata exists and the raw materials for masonry construction are cheap and abundant. The wall is increased in width by corbelling out the masonry to achieve the required overall foundation width as shown in Fig. 9.3.

It should be noted that it can be important, particularly when using masonry strips in clay or silt sub-strata, to bed the masonry units in mortar and to completely fill all joints.

The reason for filling the joints is mainly to prevent the strip footing acting as a field drain with the water flowing along the surface of the formation level and through the open joints of masonry. The authors have found clear evidence  of induced settlement due to softening of the clay surface below dry random rubble strips (dry random rubble being a term for dry stacking without mortar and not dry meaning no moisture).

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Masonry may be defined as the construction of building units bonded together with mortar. These building units, commonly known as masowy units may be stones, bricks or precast blocks. Masonry is used for the construction of foundation walls, columns and other similar structural components. The construction with stone units, bonded with mortar is known as stone masonry, while the construction with brick units, bonded with mortar is known as brick masonry. A composise masonry may use different types of building units for the construction.

Walls are the mosi essential componens of a building. The primary function of the wall is to endose or divide space of the building to make it more functional and useful. Walls provide privacy, afford security and give protection against heat, coid, Sun and ram. Walls may be either load bearing or non-load bearing. Load bearing walls are those which are designed to carry the super-imposed loads (transferred through roofs), in addition to their own (self) weight. Non-load bearing walls carry their own load only. They generally serve a divide walls or partilion walls. Wall may be of several types, such as cavity walls, party walls, partittion walls, dwarf walls, retaining walls

A column is an isolated vertical load bearing member, the width of which is neither less than its thickness nor more than four times its thickness. A pier is a member similar to a column except that it is bonded into load bearing wall at the sides to form integral part and extends to the fuli height of the wall. A pier is used to increase the stiffness of the wall to carry additional load or to carry vertical concentrated load.