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).