**3.1. Characteristic of the construction material**

For, the construction of simple house with either brick or concrete block and the bamboo rein‐ forced concrete structure characteristics of the materials are need be determined. To this end, the characteristics of the materials used were tested in the laboratory. The material tests are as follows: compressive strength of brick masonry, compressive strength of concrete block wall, compressive strength of concrete, tensile strength of bamboo, and flexural test on concrete beam with bamboo reinforcement.

#### *3.1.1. The brick masonry compressive strength*

**Figure 1** shows the four samples of brick masonry used in the test: the length averaged 470 mm, width averaged 112 mm, and the height averaged 377 mm. The average compressive strength obtained was 2.04 MPa.

#### *3.1.2. The concrete block wall compressive strength*

The mortar space of concrete block wall was made of Portland cement and sand with the ratio 1 to 4. The compressive strength averaged 4.96 Mpa, which, according to SNI 03‐0348‐1989, can be classified as having the quality of B40. **Figure 6** [3] shows a failure/collapse model of

**Figure 6.** Collapse of concrete block wall sample after being tested [3].

concrete block for wall system in Indonesia under compressive test. The concrete block wall used to apply as a typical masonry wall in semimodern residential houses.
