Pilaster

Pilasters get placed at corners, at intervals along a long wall, or anywhere a wall needs extra stiffness to resist bowing outward, such as under a beam load or at the free end of a freestanding wall with nothing to brace it. In CMU construction, a pilaster is typically formed with larger or doubled-up cells that get heavily reinforced with rebar and grouted solid top to bottom, giving that section of wall far more strength than the standard cells running on either side of it. In brick construction the same idea shows up as a thickened, reinforced pier built into the wall rather than a special block shape. A pilaster doesn't have to sit flush with the wall face either; it can project out slightly, which sometimes gets used deliberately as a design detail on a visible retaining wall or garden wall.

Long retaining walls and freestanding block or brick walls around here often need pilasters spaced along their length specifically because the wall is fighting lateral soil pressure or wind load on top of the constant freeze-thaw stress this region puts on masonry. Skipping pilasters on a wall that needs them, or spacing them too far apart to save on material, is a common reason we see walls leaning or cracking years after they were built. How far apart pilasters can be spaced comes down to wall height and what the wall is resisting, which is something we calculate for each project rather than assume, especially on a wall holding back a graded Blue Ridge slope.