Water absorption
The water absorption results are presentation in Fig. 8. It can be
seen that all water absorption values were below the maximum
water absorption capacity, which is 208 kg/m3 for normal weight
masonry block, 240 kg/m3 for medium weight masonry block and
320 kg/m3 for light weight masonry block in accordance with ASTM
C55-11 (ASTM Standard C55, 2011). This shows that the masonry
blocks fulfill ASTM C55-11 (ASTM Standard C55, 2011) requirement
for normal, medium or light weighted masonry blocks in terms of
water absorption. Comparing between the POFA masonry blocks
and the control masonry blocks, the water absorption of POFA
masonry blocks are observed to be slightly higher (0.1%). The
reason behind this is due to the greater porosity of POFA which tend
to favor water absorption (Safiuddin et al., 2011).