Thank you for all the compliments. I'm glad to hear people are getting some use out of the thread.
I did get my second monthly electric bill in the new house. It was just $183. That is lower than any month in the past 2 years in the old house (8,800sqft living space in the new ICF house vs 2,400 sqft in the old stick house).
Besides ICF, there were a few other things I did to minimize my electricity use:
1) The new house has geothermal heating/cooling using my pond. That involved laying 3,000 feet of 2" HDPE pipe on the bottom of my pond. It took me 2 weekends and a couple of day laborers to help lay the pipe, but it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.
2) I know water heating is the second largest portion of a typical residential electric bill, so I designed my own system that would let me have instant hot water in every room, while minimizing the electricity use. If I just put a single water heater in the house, it would take more than 90 seconds for hot water to reach some of my rooms. I didn't like the idea of putting in a circulating hot water pump. A circulating hot water system would be the equivalent of heating my interior walls year round (in the middle of Texas) and would be a huge waste of energy. My solution is a little bit complicated and has higher up front costs, but I think will be a good long-term investment.
Each room with a sink (kitchen, bar, laundry (x2) and bathroom (x8) has an 11kw instant electric water heater that has just enough power to heat water from room temperature to say 120 or so depending on the flow rate. Most of the year, this is all I need. However, I also have a single 50-gallon tank water heater that is set to near room temperature (75 degrees). So in the middle of winter when the water entering the house would be too cold for the instant water heaters, it gets pre-heated to room temp. This system lets me have instant hot water in every room, and I am never heating water unless I am actually using the hot water.
3) All LED lighting in the house. Good dimmable LED bulbs are down to about $6-8 each, so I bought a few hundred back in January to do all the interior lighting.
Papuz - I chose to go with an acrylic stucco / EIFS type product. I wanted something that could be directly applied to the ICF, but was flexible enough to prevent cracking, and would not require control joints in all my exterior walls. I left the particular brand up to my contractor, and he used one called Omega Stucco. I'm satisfied with the Omega product, but there are a number of similar products out there. I don't have enough experience to recommend one brand over another. Dryvit, Grail Coat, and Stuc-o-flex are a few similar type products that I ran across.
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