Bricks, Masonry, Asphalt and Concrete - Surface bonded block?

I am building a drystacked surfaced bonded foundation wall. The wall is 32 feet long with three 8 foot walls coming off in an E shape it is 10 feet high.
I am wondering if anyone has any experience with this method of building.
Specifically when using the fiberglass reinforced stucco do I need to do control joints in the 32 long wall.
Also I will be filling the wall with concrete and I would like to do it in 3 foot tall sections is it bad to have the concrete cure and then pour on top of it again? Is there some kind of chemical I need to add to bond this? I will be putting rebar in every cavity.
Thanks for any responses.

Did you have any trouble getting a permit?

That is a very tall wall to try to dry stack and keep straight and plumb. You may have to shim or use mortar in the bed joints somewhere (4' & 8' up?).

Even though a surface bondded wall is weaker for vertical loads, that is a lot of extra steel and grout unless you have a very unusual application.

I would go with heavier steel and increase the spacing to 16", 32" or 48" on center. This will reduce the number of cores you are filling by 50 to 75%.

Your engineer should be able to give you guidance on the proceedure for both high lift and low lift grouting. Normally, a cold joint in not very advisable. It is best to slowly pour the cores full height with some pauses to give the grout a chance to settle and consolidate. This is especially true if you do not have enough bracing against the wall.

If you are cutting down on the grout height to eliminate lifting the block over the long steel and are using shorter steel, make sure you have enough lap length and you get the top surface of the grout clean.

You should not need any control joints if you do not have openings, changes in wall height or heavy concentrated loads.

You can expect close scrutiny with this type of construction because of the rarity and lack of many specific requirements written in the code. Make sure you have all the recommendations and data sheets from the surface bonding material supplier in addition to your signed drawings.

Dick

Thanks for the response.
I was trying to avoid lifting the blocks over the rebar and I also want to make sure I get all the viods filled I feel I can do this in shorter lifts.
I am in a permit free area even so I talked with 3 engineers about the plan It seems like filling the entire wall was the best idea.
I already have #5 rebar stubbed every 8 inches out of a 10 inch thick 5 foot wide footing so I figured it would be best to go all the way up the wall with this then run # 4 in bond beams evey 2 feet up the wall.
Also from what I have read dry stacked fiberglass reenforced stucco block is 6 times stronger than regular mortared block is this not true?

I sort of figured you did not have a permit.

Some very general comments without seeing the plans (based on conventional engineered masonry foundations. The 10 wall height changes some things. I assume you are using 12" block to make stacking easier, but 8" will work also. A good engineer could do it with 6", but there is really no reason to get that thin.

1. If you are going with shorter lengths of vertical steel, you will use much more steel because of the necessary overlap to develope the flexural strength of the steel. You really should not use mortar. You are probably in a state of overdesign, but it is hard to tell because of the construction deviations from recommended practice (permits or not). I hope your engineers were really familar with structural masonry design.

2. The #5 bars are OK and I hope they are bent bars with a horizontal leg. Normal practice is to use much more than 8" exposed. With only 8" you only have enough length for a much smaller bar.

3. Your footing is really oversized unless you have very poor soil. Since you have the wide footings, you will need transverse (perpedicular to the wall) rather than just the tradition longitudinal steel for a typical 20-24" basement footing that is 8" thick.

4. The bond beams are probably not necessary if the fiber reinforced surface bonding (Conproco, etc.) is applied corectly. This is especially true with the vertical #5's unless you are in heavy seismic country.

5. The strength is a typical advertising gimmick, also know as "buyer beware". You have to read everything closely and question the glorious claims. Fiber surface bonding on both sides is stronger for flexural strength for normal walls, but that is not important if you have steel and grout in the wall - the amount of flexural strength added by the steel far exceeds the strength added by the surface coating. In the case of compression (vertical load) the surface bonded wall is weaker (est. 20-40% less) because there is no mortar and the block are really only sitting on the high points and each block is sitting on the high points of 2 different block.

You biggest problem will be dry stacking the block accurately. When the surface bonding system was first proposed in the U.S. about 30 years ago, it was recommended that the wall be shimmed every 3 to4 courses when they built with minimal reinforcement widely spaced and used conventional code grouting practices.

Keep us abreast of you progress.- (What part of the world are you in?)

Dick