Concrete Blocks

The primary use of concrete blocks is for constructing walls. These may be foundation walls for a home,sides of a barbeque, in the backyard, or complete walls for a building.

A variety of precast concrete products are used by the building trades with blocks being just one of them. Concrete blocks generally have hollow cavities on the inside to lessen weight and quantity of material used. There may be one or more such hollow cavities depending on the type of block.

The sides of the blocks may be smooth or they may have a cast design included. When in use, for building, the blocks are stacked on one another taking care to keep the rows absolutely straight and level. The joints are offset by half a block in the rows to increase strength of the wall. They are held together with concrete mortar which dries to form a hard bond.

You might think that concrete mortar is a relatively modern development but this is not the case. In ancient Roman times as early as 200 BC concrete mortar was used with shaped stones in building. In the era of 37-41 AD small precast concrete blocks were used in the Naples area of Italy for construction.

Unfortunately during the fall of the Roman empire in the 5th Century A.D.most of the concrete technology which had been developed ny the Romans became lost. Concrete technology was not seen again till the year 1824 when an English stone mason named Joseph Aspdin invented Portland cement.Thus began the modern age of concrete technology as we know it..

Make 100 Concrete Blocks Per Hour

The easy way to get started in the concrete block business is to make a number of hand molds and cast your blocks by hand. This is actually very easy to do. There are full instructions and plans available at our website.

However making concrete blocks with molds is a labor intensive process and one person can make about 100 blocks per day working alone.

The need for increased production becomes obvious at some point and the only way to achieve this is to use a concrete block making machine.These are ingenious machines which do everything from start to finish and turn out perfectly made cement blocks at a rate of 100 per hour or even more.

These machines are quite expensive to buy but you can build a machine yourself using auto parts and a few odds and ends.This machine will work very well and can turn out 800 blocks in an 8 hour workday. Plans and instructions for building it are obtainable at our website.

This is a great business to be in. Start up costs are low and demand for concrete products is always strong. Check it out at
Make Concrete Blocks.