Assessment of durability of UK AAC blocks taken from walls of buildings

It is often difficult to ascertain the durability or longevity of construction products. Two opportunities arose to examine old AAC masonry material that had been used in construction with a reasonable knowledge of the manufactured characteristics of the product. The first of these was from blocks sampled from three locations within the internal and external walls of the H+H factory in England that was being dismantled in 2013. In the second case, a partly demolished wall provided an opportunity to salvage two almost complete blocks for testing. This paper will describe the tests, and the results and compare the results with the predicted physical characteristics of the manufactured products