My garage was built about 20 months ago. It was on top of what had been filled in about 5 years earlier. Big problem was that the excavator had to dig down 6 feet before reaching the buried tree stumps, plus digging deeper yet to remove the stump, he had one hell of a hole. It is very heavy clay and he said he filled it in layers packing it down the best he could with the excavator. He actually turned the footing a bit to stay off of most of that giant hole he had to dig and fill in.
OK, withing a few months the block wall cracked at the joints, not bad some places, but worse where the mason forgot to put the wire between courses. I fixed the cracks when they were about 1/4" but they came back, maybe another 1/8". I was starting a plan to get rebar in at angles and add concrete when I had another idea. I picture a long "bolt" from one corner to the other. It's not easy to describe how I would attach the bolt at each end but it would be going into a block cell at each end that already has rebar and is poured solid. BTW, the "bolt" would be rebar welded together and then a turnbuckle or two welded in the middle section. I could easily go through the wall with the bolt and add a big 1/4" plate on each end as a washer, but I don't know how well the future stucco would look trying to hide these bolts. Or I suppose I could use a small tube around the bolts so the stucco doesn't touch them and I could tighten it in the future if needed.
That's a lot of variables, any ideas?
Ever seen anything like this done? Any pros and cons?