Reply to:Can you share what your total projected cost is for the house (interior and exterior)? Also, I can just go on my personal experience: I feel that mini ductless is easy to install; cheap to purchase; very efficient; good at cooling; and better looking than vents in your ceiling. You can purchase and install for about $3k per 1,000 sq feet. And no permits. I would share it with you if I had it. But I don't have enough bids yet to tell you a number. What I do have are numbers per job from other local owner builders. Their average sqft price is somewhere between $80 and $100. Although we won't go luxurious either but want to having a quality home, we think that we will need to watch the budget really well. Our budget is $500 K, including the fees. Another local ICF builder is offering $115 per sqft turn-key. But of course extras will add up quickly and every home owner will want to have extras in a custom home. In regards to the mini split: That sounds good. All the numbers I've got from Mitsubishi"diamond dealers" were shocking. How can be the numbers so different? I thought that Mitsubishi could do better (and maybe other manufacturers as well) while having better educated and motivated contractors dedicated to mini splits out there. I truly believe that mini splits are very efficient, but showing and spreading word of having ugly units at the wall and on top selling their installation for a price that only rich people can afford, won't make them grow in the USA. That was my experience, and believe me that I did research for a long time, calling various dealers, sales reps and even Mitsubishi themselves. My husband dislikes their look, I disliked the installation prices. Could have been different if there was somebody competent to convince us from the opposite. Now it's too late for us, we've made our decision. Bad conduction of business for mini splits - that's all I can say.

Posted By FBBP on 25 Apr 2014 09:45 AM
Dan - we have done a number of raised parapets on ICF buildings, so that is no problem. One car dealership, we raised the outside wall 8' above the roof to provide an enclosed patio for the staff right off their lunch room. We finished every thing in acrylic stucco and yes it looks a bit like an old spanish court yard. The problem is that stuccos are sand based so you get a pebble texture.

To do yours right, I suspect you would have to look for a clay/lime plaster based finish, similar to what some of the earth/ straw bale folks use. These finishes finish smooth such that you would get a slight reflection off them whereas the stucco finish never gets that shine due to the sand.

Thanks for the info. I will check into the stucco you wrote about. And do you know if the parapet, built with ICF, would cost the same as the exterior wall per sq foot?

Posted By Rafi on 25 Apr 2014 12:11 PM
I would share it with you if I had it. But I don't have enough bids yet to tell you a number. What I do have are numbers per job from other local owner builders. Their average sqft price is somewhere between $80 and $100. Although we won't go luxurious either but want to having a quality home, we think that we will need to watch the budget really well. Our budget is $500 K, including the fees. Another local ICF builder is offering $115 per sqft turn-key. But of course extras will add up quickly and every home owner will want to have extras in a custom home.

Well, I am interested in what you end up with. I am looking at about $120 to $130 per sq foot as the limit of my budget. I really hope that I can shave costs as an owner/builder. And also by using a fairly minimalist design. I am headed to the county office right now to get the breakdown on permit costs. I am sure that will take hours and I am pretty sure what I receive today will be way off from what I ultimately have to spend...but I have to start somewhere. I have had bad luck with the San Diego permitting office. They are really poorly run and staffed. One kinda funny story about code enforcement here (don't read if you're already bored): I started a diy project for solar on the roof of my current house. I built a six inch high platform for the panels before I got my permit since I had the workers at the house for another project. I liked the way the 700 sq foot platform looked..it made a nice deck on my roof. One of the neighbors could see it from their second story so they called the city to complain I was building a deck on my roof. They are the only house with visibility to my roof. It took the city weeks of calls and questions to me to get a guy out here to see if I was building a roof deck. He eventually came out to see if there was a deck up there. I hadn't paid for the diy solar permit yet so I told him there was no deck on my roof. He told me I had to let him up there to confirm. I told him that he was wrong...I don't have to let anyone up there. He told me he would get a judge to issue a search warrant. I told him that sounded exciting and asked him if he could get started on that right away because I had never had a search warrant before. He left. My neighbor called again after a few weeks when it wasn't pulled down. He came out again and asked to see the roof. I told him to go ahead. I live in a 3 story house. The only way onto the roof is a ladder I built on the 3rd floor which goes through a hatch onto the roof. He didn't know that and I didn't tell him. He pulled out his 8 foot ladder and then wondered how he could get to the top of the 30 foot roof. It was kinda funny. The "deck" was invisible unless you were in the neighbor's house across the canyon and on their second floor looking at my roof with binoculars...and you needed good eyes because by this time I had painted the "deck" the exact same color as my membrane roof. In the end, the code enforcement just wanted a few hundred bucks to leave me alone. I told him I would ask my lawyer if that was legal. He got mad...pulled out of my driveway, and crashed into my exit wall. My concrete guy was there working on my retaining wall in the back. He fixed it in 20 minutes but I submitted a claim to the city to cover the costs...they paid me $15,000. It was pretty awesome. I still have an awesome deck on my roof...Not gonna go solar since I am going to build this new ICF house instead. The neighbor is still mad about the deck. I thanked her for the $15k and told her to please call the city again to complain since I want to go to Argentina this summer for an awesome snowboard vacation and it would be nice if they paid for it. She said I was a rude and ugly man. I told her she was right about me being ugly but I wasn't rude. In fact, I removed 4 commercial compressors from my roof (and her view) and cleared my roof completely when I put in the mini ductless air conditioners...she should have appreciated that as my roof was directly in her view to the ocean from her second floor. Anyhow...off to the building office!

Good luck with your county office. CA is expensive but that's not new. And I will give you an update for sure, but I guess that will take a while.
Anyway, your story with your neighbor/generous city friends made me laugh. OMG, what a great story. You could sell that to a magazine and make more money, Hahaha.

Dan - the cost of the parapet will be close to the cost of other exterior walls. There will probably be a small uptick for more rebar as the top is not being restrained by the roof.
Remember that the top of the wall still needs to be capped.

Posted By Rafi on 25 Apr 2014 12:11 PM
 
All the numbers I've got from Mitsubishi"diamond dealers" were shocking. How can be the numbers so different? I thought that Mitsubishi could do better (and maybe other manufacturers as well) while having better educated and motivated contractors dedicated to mini splits out there. I truly believe that mini splits are very efficient, but showing and spreading word of having ugly units at the wall and on top selling their installation for a price that only rich people can afford, won't make them grow in the USA. That was my experience, and believe me that I did research for a long time, calling various dealers, sales reps and even Mitsubishi themselves. My husband dislikes their look, I disliked the installation prices. Could have been different if there was somebody competent to convince us from the opposite. Now it's too late for us, we've made our decision. Bad conduction of business for mini splits - that's all I can say.

The mini split units themselves come at a base wholesale price that the distributors (dealers) take and will sometimes mark up and labor is typically just taken from the cost of the unit and doubled. So if a 3 ton ductless unit is $3k, the contractor will charge $6k+ for the unit & install. Of course a lot of the labor costs depend on complexity and what is actually involved with the install.

I am currently working on an energy retrofit project and will be installing a 3-ton Mitsubishi dual-zone ductless unit. It's going to run around $6k for the unit, labor, electrical work, etc. To do a ducted system in that same area would have cost around $20k -$25k. A ductless mini setup will usually save you around 50% - 75% of the cost of a ducted system.

As with any system out there, it call comes down to the company/subs/contractors who are selling and installing the units. With the US market, it's a difficult market to break into for ductless minis because the HVAC ducted industry rules the roost. Companies like Mitsubishi, Daikin, and others don't have the luxury of finding the best of the best dealers. They have to get their product out and sometimes they get the bad contractors.

The same thing happened to ICF back in the 2000's. In order to get market share, numerous ICF companies started to sell to idiots who had no clue how to install ICF and blowouts, crooked walls, voids, and a host of problems emerged. This caused a huge backlash and gave ICF a black eye. Lesson learned. Now, most reputable ICF manufacturers only sell to qualified contractors.

Mitsubishi has taken notice and in the last month they have pulled A LOT of distributors out. They (Mitsu) are now only allowing top rated dealers to sell and install their minis. If a non-certified dealer sells you a mini, Mitsubishi will not honor the warranty.

Posted By FBBP on 24 Apr 2014 06:33 PM
Hey Rafi - would you mind letting us know what R-value your heating designer used for the ICF when he did the heat loss/gain calc's ?

Okay, I've received his response and I am copying his words in here: We used a composite R-value of 25.6 for the ICF wall assembly. The benefits of the ICF walls go above just R-values, their thermal mass give added performance to the wall system. The windows we ended up using a U-value of 0.23 to match the worst case value of the frame, and the SHGC of 0.12. Standard high end contractor grade windows we see are usually around 0.25 for U-value, and 0.20 for the SHGC. So the windows you are installing have a large benefit.

Here's where I bought one third of my mini split systems: http://www.minisplitwarehouse.com/product/ymgi-multi-zone-room-ductless-mini-split-heat-pump-ac --- my whole house is heated and cooled using YMGI. I paid 2 handy men $1800 to install all 3 compressors and all 15 wall units. About half of the 15 were easy to install (just cut out some drywall and install while bringing the cabling and tubing through the drywall from the compressor, and connecting the condensation line to existing water lines or just drilling through the exterior drywall and having the unit drain at the bottom of the house). The other half had longer routes through the drywall for the cabling, etc. It took those 2 guys 3 and a half days to complete the installation. My house is 7,000 sq feet. 3 stories. And has 9 foot ceilings in every room. Plus floor to ceiling windows in every room. I paid an A/C guy $700 I found in the penny saver magazine to come out, check the system, and fill with freon (or whatever the new coolant is called now). He was here for several hours checking and had to call YMGI about something but it worked and has been working perfectly for about a year and a half now. The penny saver A/C guy used his license to lock in my 5 year warranty with YMGI. My house has been as high as 116 degrees on the 3rd floor. I was able to get the temp on that floor down to 76 using two 18k wall units and one 9k wall unit. That is 1500 sq feet. I am not an A/C expert and I just researched mini split before I bought mine. This is an ICF sub forum so I don't wanna spend too much time talking about it...and I don't wanna take responsibility if someone buys this brand and has a bad experience. But I can tell you that it worked for me. I feel that everyone should trash their old system and switch to mini split. I am super weird when it comes to paying for things. I do a tremendous amount of research on any major purchase I make. I am buying my solar system through Ali Baba vendors in China. I had 3 companies come to my house for estimates on the mini split system. The 3 prices were: $85k, $95k and $120k. I didn't do any of the work myself and it cost me $18k. Plus, I got a more powerful system than the 3 companies were going to install. I had 3 estimates for taking me off the grid for electricity (solar). My monthly gas and electric in San Diego is about $2500 per month (before I switched to mini split...now it is about $1600...a really big savings, btw). My 3 estimates for off grid with 3 days of battery back up were: $375k, $395k and $420k. They told me I would get 30% back but I looked into it and I wouldn't get that much back. Either way, I found a better system from 3 manufacturers in China, from Ali Baba. The cost is about $85k delivered. This is a bigger and more powerful system than the estimates I got. Plus 4 days of back up with much better batteries than those companies quoted me. It will cost about $6K for me to install it. The same thing is starting to happen with ICF estimates. The builders come to my house thinking I am wealthy because my house is large and charge me a ridiculous amount. I afford my large house because I rent it out as a vacation rental on VRBO about 120 days per year. I am not rich...I just find ways to buy things I want on my budget. My house rents for $1200 per day on VRBO so I live here for free and actually make a nice profit on it each year. My new house that I plan to build with ICF will be the same. I will rent it out for $1500 per day, it will cost me nothing to live in it, and I will probably make a nice profit on it as well. Sorry for being way off topic.

danablake1,
Did you get good info at the county today?
Also, I just tried to send you a private message as I had couple questions about your last post, but didn't want to continue the "off the topic" conversation in this forum. Don't know if you received something, because I can't see anything in Sent items. Would you check please? Thanks.

I sent you a private message. And the county office was informative. I got the work flow for an owner/builder and a way to calculate permit fees. I have to go through everything this weekend. Lots of paperwork.

Glad to hear that you've got information and you wont't be bored this weekend ;-) I've received your message but still can't reply. Always get this error message when clicking "Send message": A critical error has occurred. Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Any idea what I could do wrong?

Just email me.

Posted By FBBP on 25 Apr 2014 01:52 PM
Dan - the cost of the parapet will be close to the cost of other exterior walls. There will probably be a small uptick for more rebar as the top is not being restrained by the roof.
Remember that the top of the wall still needs to be capped.

Thanks for the info.

Posted By Rafi on 25 Apr 2014 04:36 PM

Posted By FBBP on 24 Apr 2014 06:33 PM
Hey Rafi - would you mind letting us know what R-value your heating designer used for the ICF when he did the heat loss/gain calc's ?

Okay, I've received his response and I am copying his words in here: We used a composite R-value of 25.6 for the ICF wall assembly. The benefits of the ICF walls go above just R-values, their thermal mass give added performance to the wall system. The windows we ended up using a U-value of 0.23 to match the worst case value of the frame, and the SHGC of 0.12. Standard high end contractor grade windows we see are usually around 0.25 for U-value, and 0.20 for the SHGC. So the windows you are installing have a large benefit.

How does he account for the added performance of the mass if he is only using 25.6? Does he use a factor on the final number?

How does he account for the added performance of the mass if he is only using 25.6? Does he use a factor on the final number?

You know that sounds strange to me too. He might have mixed up the numbers and he did mix up the numbers for sure with the SHGC and U-Value, which is just vice versa (I missed to see it before I've copied his answer in here). The SHGC is 0.25 (which we need for hot Arizona climate zone 2) and the Ug-value (glass only) is 0.12, but I guess he took the whole window U-value as a 0.23 for a worst case calculation. I will send him this question and see what he's going to answer. Will let you know again.