Lightweight Concrete Masonry

Arcosa Lightweight’s expanded shale and clay aggregates are key to creating high-performance, lightweight concrete masonry units (CMUs) that offer reduced weight, improved thermal efficiency, and enhanced fire resistance.

By incorporating lightweight aggregates, CMUs achieve the strength and durability needed for load-bearing applications while offering significant benefits in construction efficiency, worker safety, and overall building performance.

Key Benefits

Concrete Masonry Units (CMUs) made with Arcosa Lightweight provide reduced weight for easier handling, enhanced fire resistance, improved thermal efficiency, and long-lasting durability, making them ideal for safe, energy-efficient, and low-maintenance structures.

Reduced Weight for Easier Handling and Installation

Lightweight CMUs are 30-40% lighter than traditional units, making them easier to handle and install. This weight reduction improves worker safety, increases productivity, and lowers construction costs by allowing faster, safer installation.

Superior Fire Resistance and Thermal Performance

The unique properties of Arcosa aggregates, including trapped air voids, provide excellent fire resistance and improved thermal insulation. Lightweight CMUs can achieve fire ratings of up to four hours, contributing to safer, more energy-efficient structures.

Long-Term Durability and Structural Efficiency

Arcosa Lightweight aggregates create CMUs with high strength, durability, and reduced permeability. These qualities result in long-lasting, low-maintenance walls that provide sound and impact resistance, contributing to overall structural efficiency.

Featured Case Studies

Clinch County School Leverages Lightweight CMUs for Durability

Students and staff at the new Clinch County K-12 School in Homerville, Georgia, may never notice the concrete block in the walls of their new school. Yet these blocks—specifically the lightweight units made with Arcosa’s lightweight aggregate—play a quiet but crucial role across all three campus buildings: ensuring structural integrity, optimizing thermal performance, and, most importantly, enhancing fire resistance.

Longtime Masons Describe Real Advantages of Lightweight Concrete Block

It’s one thing to read a pile of technical white papers about the performance, superior fire resistance, aesthetic properties, quality, and productivity improvements possible with lightweight concrete masonry units (CMUs) or concrete block. It’s quite another to hear it straight from the people who are out in the field installing the product.

Building for Safety: Lightweight Block Protects Guntersville Students

As Guntersville, Alabama prepares to open its first new high school since 1969, Arcosa Lightweight and its customer, Kirkpatrick Concrete, North Division, are playing a key role in ensuring the new facility is built to last and, most importantly, to protect students and staff.

Situated in an area prone to severe weather, the decision to use lightweight concrete masonry units (CMUs) was crucial for enhancing safety, durability, and sustainability.

Weight Reduction and Structural Support

Lightweight aggregates reduce CMU weight by up to 40% without compromising structural strength, simplifying installation and lowering dead load on the foundation.

Fire and Thermal Performance

The ceramic properties of Arcosa aggregates offer enhanced fire resistance and improved thermal performance, contributing to safer, more efficient buildings.

Sound and Impact Absorption

Arcosa’s aggregates create CMUs with sound-dampening and impact-resistant properties, adding durability and acoustic comfort to walls in various building types.

Why Choose Arcosa Lightweight for Lightweight CMU?

Proven Success in Construction: Arcosa aggregates are trusted in projects where high-performance, lightweight CMUs are required, from commercial buildings to public institutions.
Enhanced Efficiency and Safety: Lightweight CMUs improve construction efficiency, reduce worker strain, and increase productivity, resulting in faster, safer project completion.
Long-Lasting and Sustainable: Arcosa’s commitment to quality materials means that CMUs built with Arcosa aggregates offer sustainable, durable, and low-maintenance solutions for a wide range of building needs.

Ask our Expert: 1-800-342-LITE

Bill Wolfe is an accomplished Marketing and Technical Manager at Arcosa Lightweight, with over three decades of experience. Based in Saratoga County, New York, Bill specializes in lightweight aggregate applications for enhanced structural performance and sustainability.