Architects & Design Professionals

  Central Arizona Block Company besides being a manufacture,  is an excellent source for you to ask us for more specifics on:

• What products are available?    CABCO is a full line Mfg. of Smooth, Split-Face, Shot Blast, Ground Face, Polished, Founders Finish & Slump. Many aggregate choices are available to add distinction in addition to block color.  All products are produced at one location, this reduces transport damage and lead times.
•  Why some jobs product costs vary significantly more than others?  While almost anything is possible, designs that require excessive mold changes for size and shape, small quantities of a unique product (either color, shapes or aggregates), or small orders with non stocking colors, cost us extra to produce.  Due to anytime the block machines are not running, they are not making any money. Special colors and aggregates are not an issue on large orders but our minimum batch size is 3/4 cyd, so small non stock colors create a lot of waste.
  
•  Lead times?     Ours are some of the shortest in the industry.  However: Some products finishes like Ground & Polished, for best results need to be at least 3 weeks old before those finishing processes are started. 
• Leed & recycled capabilities?   We can add up to 35% recycled content to many of our products. If your project involves masonry demolition, often times we will accept that for a disposal fee (keeping it out of landfills)- it must be masonry only- no contamination. Keep in mind some recycled colors may show on certain finishes, such as splits, ground and polished. (usually they are an attribute to color)
• Avoiding design pitfalls?     Such as designs calling for raked exterior mortar joints. This a potential water penetration problem unless you specify off- set cores on the exterior units that are to have raked mortar joints.  Off-set cores will give the front shell extra thickness so a raked mortar joint will still have decent thickness, reducing the likely hood of significant water penetration.   In addition, expect more edge chipping from the tooling process on raked joints.  Keep in mind any chipping on block will show with a raked mortar joint. With normal spooned  to front of shell mortar joints, almost all chips are covered by the mortar.  Color variance is another potential for issues. Say when combining a dark shade like black above or below say a white marble product. While the look is unique, keep in mind there will be some color from manufacturing that will tend to bleed or wash out from newly manufactured block initially.  Such sharp color contrasts make this more noticeable.  Our experience that it weathers off fairly quickly but will be noticeable when new, especially after a rain. 
• Sealers & IWR?     We offer IWR (Internal Water Repellent) as an option on our products. Keep in mind IWR's are not a surface sealer, rather  a mechanism that restricts water from penetrating through the masonry.    Whenever IWR is specified for masonry, it should also be specified for the mortar.  We do not pre-seal any of our products. We believe a better option is applying those dollars to having the exterior wall surfaces sealed, since that seals everything, especially the mortar contact joints.
• Fire Rating         Like most manufactures we use equivalent thickness method for computing fire ratings. National Concrete Masonry Association covers fire ratings in depth with publication TEK 07-01C, which can be found at https://ncma.org/resource/fire-resistance-ratings-of-concrete-masonry-assemblies/         Typically our standard 8816 falls just short of a two hour rating with standard aggregates  and shell thicknesses.  Increased fire duration can be achieved by block changes or by filling the block cells with an approved fill.  Some methods a manufacture can do are, a wider block, thicker face shell, use of cinder aggregates in the block mfg process.
• Efflorescence       This troublesome event often randomly appears, usually mortar joints or the top of walls.  No one knows all the causes, but we have noticed in areas where water has high concentrations of salts, often mortar joints show effervescence. We believe this is because most masons rely on onsite water. In addition, reclaimed water should never be used.
  
• Finish and Appearance
  C-90 finish and appearance provisions prohibit defects that would impair the strength or performance of the construction, but permit minor cracks incidental to usual manufacturing methods. For units which will be exposed, the presence of objectionable imperfections is based on viewing the unit face(s) from a distance of at least 20 ft (6.1 m) under diffused lighting. Five percent of a shipment may contain chips not larger than 1 in. (25.4 mm) in any dimension, or cracks not wider than 0.02 in. (0.5 mm) and not longer than 25% of the nominal unit height.

The Reference heading above has specific product details such as sustainability, pictures of block colors and textures, standard color list. 
Be sure to check out the More heading then Projects to see we can supply them all.
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If unable to find what you need or you require further information, product samples or sample boxes just contact the below.

Josh

 General Manager / Commercial Sales
Office 520-514-1177  or Josh @cabcoaz.com

Rick

Commercial Sales / Customer Service
Office 520-514-1177   [email protected]