ICF (insulated concrete forms)

[Randy Dandy]

Is there anyone here that has built, or know of someone, that has built a house with these ICF's ? I would like to talk with them via email, phone,ect... I have sent questions to aprox. 10 different manufactures that make ICF's, but I do keep in mind that they are in the market to sell. We are considering this system in the near future. Any help would be great. Thanks, Randy

[MarleneS]

Don't know if this will help or not - but just yesterday on PBS's "This Old House" they were putting in a basement using those preformed insultated concret forms -- and they mentioned that on an earlier show they showed how they were made. I know you can purchase videos of the shows, check with your local PBS station.

Good luck
Marlene

[joan from zone six]

i've looked into them and agree they are an excellent way to end up with a strong and efficient structure - what bugs me is that the individual foam blocks seem to be obscenely expensive - almost like the mfrs have done some serious price fixing since competition doesn't drive down costs -

[MikeD]

You may also want to check out precast foundations... I know that there is a company called "Superior" that manufactures them... Supposedly more dense, stronger, better insulating and more waterproof than site poured concrete. Faster build time as well....Possibly more expensive for materials but the labor cost should cut down the overall figures....

[Randy Dandy]

Thank you all very much for your help and suggestions. Randy

[Kris in MI]

Randy,

We built our house in 2002-2003. We did the ICF's on our basement. Yes, they are expensive, but the way we saw it, the money was well spent for several reasons:

1. because it was a time savings (vs wooden forms, pouring cement, removing forms, insulating, putting in firring strips to attach wallboard to on the inside, etc). They snapped together just like Legos (we joked we were building our house out of giant white Legos) and were great to work with.

2. They are super duper insulated, so what we compared was not just the cost of having the poured walls in the basement (or the precast concrete) but also the cost of the insulation of the same R-value.

3. The foam on them is something you can attach your drywall, paneling, etc right to instead of having to mess with firring strips if you wanted (or needed for code in our case) to finish your basement walls on the inside.

Being 3-in-1 nature like this, we saved alot on the LABOR, which was very important to us since we did 90% of the contruction on our home ourselves after work and on weekends (that's why it took us nearly 15 months to move in, and we still don't have all the trimwork done!)

If you have any questions on the particular brand (I'd have to look up our receipts or ask dh) or anything else, please feel free to pm me.