Statistics for Epoxy systems with and without different volume fractions of fly ash particulate fillers are made and their absorption due to immersion in saline water maintained at room temperature are established through weight measurements recorded up to 100h. The 100-h exposed samples are additionally subjected to compression tests to evaluate the strength. The results show that both neat epoxy and fly ash-bearing composites exhibit differing levels of aqueous medium absorption - it being less in ash-free samples. When the ash content in the system is large, the absorption levels are high. The data further revealed that the unexposed samples generally record an increasing strength value with ash content. However, for the exposed cases, a reversal in trend with the ash content is noticed. Attempts to explain these differing trends are made in this work by analyzing the features observed on the surface of compression-failed samples using fractography employing scanning electron microscopy (SEM). © 2005 Sage Publications.