concrete stress cracks
When building a concrete retaining wall, what should be the recomended distance between each stress break?
We had a concrete retaining wall built. The wall is 18 inches tall and about 120 feet long. There are breaks every 28 to 30 feet, I was told for stress. The wall is cracking. I believe about every 6 to 8 feet. Is 28 to 30 feet to long of a wall without some sort of breaks in between.
The wall is actually 8X8X16 cinder block, with a concrete cap. The wall is stuccoed. The cap is what is cracking, major cracks about every 6 to 8 feet. The contractor did put in stress breaks, or whatever you would call them, every 28 feet or so. But now we have them every 6 to 8 feet. Of course not intentionally. Doesn’t look good. The cracks go all the way down to the wall. Since it is just stucco over block, the wall itself doesn’t look as bad. I would think maybe the weight of the concrete cap may have caused the wall to settle.
dear Anna banana; concrete will decide to break wherever it feels like. the stress breaks are most definitely a long ways apart, however, if the footing was not prepared properly, it’ll crack anytime anywhere it feels with settling.
they should have put re-bar #4, 2 each in the laterals and re-bar #4s as uprights every 4 feet and tied them all together.
the footing should have been prepared separately and also with 2 #4 laterals of re-bar. this would give you a good base to start from. if you have a lot of side pressure from the soil, you may have had to put the outriggers in the wall framed with re-bar and tied to the wall every 8 feet.
hard telling what the situation is not being there, but one look could tell you that it has a bad construction and could give you a remedy.
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