Masonry: Bond Beam Versus Lintel

In this video, I'd like to talk about the difference between a lintel block and a bond beam block. So a lintel block is clearly a lintel. It's over an opening versus a bond beam block. That one is top of a wall or wherever a diaphragm frames in or maybe top of a foundation wall. Bond beams are placed more frequently in seismic zones. They might be every four foot of height, you might have a bond beam. It ties horizontally all the blocks and gives it strength in the lateral direction. So here's the big difference between these two. The lintel block is basically solid on the bottom. It gets some rebars, and then some grout or concrete are poured in there, and it spans the opening. Clearly, the bottom is solid of this one because there's an opening. Versus the bond beam block, that one, there's openings so that any vertical rebar gets monolithically poured with horizontal rebar in the bond beam. and it gives a lot of strength in the horizontal direction to the individual blocks. See, the blocks are tied together vertically with the rebar, but horizontally it's a bunch of pieces, and the truss ties in the mortar bed is not enough to tie them together. So here, with a bond beam, you get a lot more strength. So here are the lintel blocks. We see because this is upside down, of course, sitting on the ground, but there's the bottom of the lintel block. that is in this picture. And its profile looks something like that. And it's poured, and there's rebar in there. And, of course, we need to reinforce wherever the lintel lands to make a column to take the load from the lintel. Very good. So here it is. Now, this one is acting more like a bond beam because I see a girt over here in this metal building frame. I see a girt. So we want some kind of nice solid surface to put this girt on. And here's the rebar coming out of it. It's been poured. And here's the insulation and the brick facade. Here's a bond beam block. The cells are open. I forgot to say this. Let me go back and say it. If I zoom in here, there's some kind of mesh here. Otherwise, it's going to go in all the cells. So when the grout comes in, it's stopped by the mesh and it flows in horizontally instead of going through the hole. The mesh stops it. So with this bond beam block, I can tie any vertical rebar to horizontal rebar and lock the wall, the top of the wall, down. So here we have another example of a bond beam, and they have these plates, studded plates with studded shear heads on it that's going to be poured. And then there it is, top of the wall. And you might expect wherever structure comes in or a diaphragm, you would expect this layer or this course of CMU to be a bond beam because it's receiving load from the open web choice. So this must be a bond beam course, not a lintel course. Hope you see the difference.