I am going to start my cabin as soon as it dries up here in west central Illinois. I am going to build my foundation using the dry stacking technique using vertical rebar and one row horizontal of rebar in the block. When all the block are in position I will fill the cells of the block with concrete. Does anyone have any experience or have any thoughts on this technique?
Thanks Mark
http://www.drystacked.com/
I bought the cd and its pretty good. I think you'll still need a solid footer and you'll want to mortar the first course to even things out, so its not totally mortar-less. I was leaning heavily toward doing my cottage drystack, but the expansive clays around here would be a challenge. Maybe some day I'll give it a try.
2zwudz, do you mean a dry stack perimeter foundation or dry stack columns/piers?
If piers and IF you don't need to have each pier top exactly level you don't need to worry about bedding the bottom block in mortar. Just place the bottom block in the wet concrete footer and embed a couple rebars with "hook" end in the wet concrete. That's what I'm doing.
But if you are doing a perimeter, that's another story. Might be worth checking out what hired labor would cost. Around here in NM they come cheap. Not sure if they're all legal? :-\
Rob Roy of Earth Bermed Houses is a big advocate of dry stacked block construction.
Are you berming earth?
Concrete block is a good thermal battery with some polystyrene foam on the outside. I think I read you could fill the cores with sand. Concrete infill is overkill as long as you use a good fiber reinforced cement for both sides of the blocks.
Were you thinking 8" or 12" thick blocks?
Do a search for "bonding cement" to read some earlier discussions.
The house I'm building used dry stack foundation walls. It's discussed in detail (see archive section) at the blog address below.