Greetings,
Has anyone done any analysis on Polycore building techniques (http://www.polycorecanada.com/)  verses ICF/SIP.  I am interested in ICF/SIP, but I am building 1 hour away from any concrete source and the price of travel and availability will be very expensive.  That being said, I would like more info and advice on this product as it is local to my build site.

Best regards,
Dennis

The System uses any surface you like, the skins are applied on the foam. You can apply a stucco coat to make the system more FIRE Resistant.

dpaish, I haven't run the numbers, but the fact that they have a steel stud embedded in the foam effectively eliminates much of the thermal insulation of the foam. If they're using an ordinary carbon steel studs, then the thermal conductivity is 43 W/mK, where the thermal conductivity of EPS is 0.03 W/mK. The steel conducts 1400 times as much energy as the EPS does - so the thickness of the sheet metal only has to be 1/1400th of the width of the EPS between the studs for them to virtually eliminate the benefit of the EPS.

If they are using a really flimsy 26 gauge stud, and the studs are closer together than 26 inches, that is enough to offset the EPS insulation. If they are using heavier gauge studs, then that 26 inches jumps to 30 or 48 or 60 inches. And since they look like they are 16" OC, that means any steel studs would be incredibly detrimental to the thermal insulation.

The studs don't pass all the way through the foam, so the remaining 1.5 to maybe 2 inches of foam would provide some insulation, but nothing near what the EPS with no studs could provide.

The steel studs in this case act as an additional thermal storage source, translated into value is "good".

Egodesk, who could possibly argue with that "brilliance"?

Hi Dennis,
I am in the Edmonton area and install the Hobbs vertical ICF (hobbsverticalicf.com) and would like to do a comparison aswell. I have done some for SIPS too.
Thanks, Brent footprint@shaw.ca