Power outage at work today and got to come home early. Came home to this. This stacking method has served me well for several years. But the old concrete cinder block gave up today. Split right open like a clam! I honestly have no idea how old some of these are. Many of them came from a neighbor, who got them from another neighbor. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Looks like you have a cinder block failure. Block on the left looks like a concrete block. Cinder blocks are made w/coal cinders or ash and concrete blocks are mainly cement and solid aggregate. Cinder blocks do not tolerate moisture well.
Cinder blocks do well with vertical pressure. What caused this failure is the sideways stress on only the outside wall. Definitely using it for an unintended purpose.
Dang it, who would have thunk it!!!! I'll have to keep an eye out now as I have a similar rack setup and many of my cinder blocks are old too. They were left on the property when I bought it, many were in the ground as well!!
May as well use them as long as you can. Make use of what you have. When it fails, then throw it in the trash; not before. The old saying is: Use it up, wear it out. Make it do or do without.
Pull the opposite ends together with a cord - more upright. It'll take the pressure off the block walls
In the winter they’ll sink in the ground and fill with snow and ice. That’s gonna cause a crack eventually. Store a chimney flue standing up on soft ground and come spring you can toss it in the garbage. A large masonry supply may have some three hour fire rated blocks kicking around. Much thicker, last longer. Some small boards underneath placed to allow the cores to drain would work nice also.
Blocks older than you may be cement blocks. There’s a lot of lightweight blocks on the market. Granted they’ve been in existence since I’ve been layin (40 years). Can be half the weight of some old cement blocks. 2/3rds the weight of a modern cement block. Just sayin,,,not all blocks are created equal. Union company I worked for bought blocks from a company in Mass because they were cheaper. Cheaper because they never upgraded the smashed forms they used to form them which creates major stresses on the green blocks when removed from the bent forms. Touch one with a hammer and they will fall apart. Visible cracks straight off the truck. Banana shaped. LOL I used to call them the Snowflake block company because not two blocks were ever the same size or shape. The side of the wall the line was on looked ok. The backside you could climb up with boxing gloves on. Just like everything else in this world quality is quality and junk is junk.
