[mstiles]

I live and work in a zone 5 area, we are geting 5-8" of snow today. Needless to say, we have a great freeze thaw cycle that plays havoc with any poorly executed walls and walkways.
Several of the larger landscaping firms in my area have recently gone away from building real stone walls and have started building concrete block walls(not interlocking just regular old 4x8x16) then flipping stones on edge and veenering them to the block. I have seen on hgtv and other places that it is common to build walls this way in the south, which I suppose makes sense. I also understand the economics of it, fewer stones and faster build times. I talked to one of the guys who has started building walls this way and he almost apologized to me in explaining how great his new system was and how much time and money it saved him.
I have seen some of these companies prep to build these walls digging down no more than a foot and placing the block on gravel sometimes with, sometimes without drainage. (That project had 2 tiers of 5 foot walls holding back much of the front yard).
My question is without pouring a real footing, and establishing a drainage system do you think one of these walls can be built to stand the test of time?

[Stonehenge]

Nope. Not in Zone 5.

We've moved a bit into mortared construction of walls, but it is miles away from being faster, easier or cheaper. It takes much longer, is a lot more work and is much more expensive. But it provides a look that no prefab SRW system can match, which is why people are asking for it.

[Fine Edge]

Even here in the South, every one of our block walls is going to be built on a solid footer with drainage behind it. Without the solid base, you're asking for trouble.

[alcland1]

It is three times the work and yes with out a footing and drainage there will be problems ahead. we replaced a few walls built like that with unilock for 1/2 the coast. A mortared wall single sided with drainage could run as much as 65 per sqf, you save a little on the material but you will feel the labor.

[Matt Kulp]

Wait...wasn't the original questions whether building a CMU with veneer is faster/cheaper than pure stone? I don't know about you guys, but veneering a wall is much faster and a heck of a lot less product then building the wall completely of stone for us. If you are comparing it to SRW's it is more expensive.

As far as the footer, you need to be below your areas frost line, and yes drainage stone is needed along with weep holes.

[TrickyDick]

I would agree with everything Matt said. We've never built a veneered wall but I've seen it done and it seems much faster (and the materials a lot cheaper) than a mortared, stacked, stone wall.