I had a contractor come over to talk about installing 2 egress windows in our basement. He mentioned the X drawn with pencil in the middle of each span of CMU wall and said, oh that will still work. I quizzed him, but all I got was “its for strength, but it won’t be a problem on the gable wall side.”
Any information you all could share would be great. Have you heard of this, does it have an official name? And most importantly, is it a big deal if we cut it out since it was right where we want the windows to open up our bank vault basement.
Thanks
Replies
Could be the first and last name of a person who couldn’t read or write.
In the building trades for over 50 yrs and seen a lot. Can’t say what it means on your foundation.
So one vote for illiteracy. Any other ideas?
On commercial projects I have done in the past an x signified that the block was filled with concrete from top to bottom in the wall in that cell of the blocks. We were mounting ledgers to the walls and used the filled cells for stronger anchors.
These were called grouted cells.
The grouted cells is helpful. Thanks.