I do not doubt the benefit of ICF wall construction over stick standard stick framing. My question to this forum after researching many of the construction methods, is this: "Are poured in place walls more cost effective than ICF walls in cold climates, given that the "insulation" is applied only to the outside "properly". It would seem that this would have some advantages over having the insulation on the inside, allowing a "true high thermal mass" heat sink to occur.
I would like to know if this type of system, use on monolithic domes and similar structures cost more than ICF construction? 

ICFs are the way to go. Once you add exterior insulation to a RCF wall you will equal an ICF wall in cost, but not performance. By having insulation on the inside the effects of thermal mass is not eliminated, just moderated. So you can have quick warm-up and the moderation of thermal mass.

There is no dynamic benefit of thermal mass in cold weather, be it ICF or poured walls. Dynamic is the key word here. Mass that stores and releases heat over a 24-hour period saves energy in real time, which is to say that your furnace stays off while your neighbor's kicks on. Obviously, once the temperature drops below 70 indefinitely, there is no more heat to store. Mass does confer other benefits involving comfort, HVAC sizing, and sound insulation, but none of that will change your utility bill appreciably. In periods longer than 24 hours, average is average no matter how you build. Your ICF wall will lag in cold snaps, but it will also lag in warmups.
If cold is the curse in your part of the world, you'd choose ICF or SIP for their superior insulation. If passive solar is possible you'd want a poured wall or some other construction method that leaves the mass exposed to the home's interior. You'll find a list of construction possibilities here: http://www.cement.org/homes/ch_buildsys.asp
Sorry, ICFConstruction. You can't convince me that a Goldilocks blend of quick warmup and effective storage works better than any other compromise, which to say barely at all at any given moment.

There are therma-eze and Tmass poured walls where they put the foam board in the middle of the form, giving you thermal mass on inside. Not sure what the cost/benefit differential is for those as opposed to ICF or poured wall with insulation on the outside. Maybe someone can weigh in on that. I am shooting for passive solar design and will take that into account.

This is not true. Buffering the effect of thermal mass by putting insulation between it and the heat is reducing the effectiveness of the thermal wheel.

You are far better off to have all the insulation on the outside.

It is just that kind of  incorrect information that does the ICF a disservice. If you are going to stretch the truth on that what else are you going to stretch the truth on.

Another untrue statement. If you have a solar design the thermal mass is very important.

I am going to add to this so you understand where I am coming from.

I live in a SIP home with a concrete floor compltely with-in the envelope. I live at 6500 feet in the mountains of Wyoming.

On sunny winter days my heat does not come on until the middle of the night. This is due to the solar energy stored in that slab and released through the evening.

I am a contractor whos job day in and day out is to pour foundations. We do slabs and other concrete services as well but foundations are the majority of our business. We do poured walls, we are authorized installer of T-mass and we do ICF's as well. I live in an ICF house. We have numerous clients that will tell you there heating and cooling bills are at least half and most are a third of what they were paying in there previous house. Yes there are alot of variables but 100% of my customers are happy with how the ICF's perform. ICF's really are efficient, I'm not the smartest guy in the world you want to debate ICFs and thermal massing I concide, but the proof is in the pudding.

Not to mention all the other ICF benefits as well.
If you want a poured wall-I'll do it.
You want t-mass- I'll do it
You want my advice-ICF

Jeez, jmagill, I don't believe Mr Miller has introduced the possibility of passive solar, so the question before us is the effect of high mass alone. We'd also need to know where Mr. Miller lives. There are cold, gray places in the midwest and east coast where solar radiation is incapable of turning the thermal mass flywheel. In that case you'd want a passive solar low mass house to capture such free energy as is available.
If I build at 6500 feet in Wyoming, yours will be the first door I knock on. I hope you don't meet me with a shotgun.

Just because he did not introduce solar does not mean that you can discount it.

I actually thought your post was well done just did not take into account all the possibilities.

It is the posts such as ICFconstruction that are 180 degrees off the mark that make me mad. That kind of wrong information is bad for the whole ICF business. It makes the people who are teliing the whole truth work twice as hard to sell a good product.

Just to add some clarity to the discussion. The house design has a perfect southern view of which I will exploit for passive solar gain. The design includes a slab-on-grade, thermally isolated from the foundation and walls. Omak has more heating days than cooling. Temperatures range from -20F to 110F, winter to summer. There are 300+ days of sunshine. Altitude in 1300 feet, climate is dry, or zone 2A. Lot is flat, good drainage, perfect for gravity septic field. Irrigation water, and shared well. There is an indoor tennis club 3 miles away (downhill). Heavan.

I will guess that the construction cost of a "conventional" poured in place structure with exterior insulation will be higher than that of a similar ICF structure in most parts of the country.  For the reasons stated below, the "conventional" solution may have a slight energy saving benefit due to the location of thermal mass, but I doubt it is significant enough to justify any significant cost premium.

From an energy consumption standpoint IN COLD WEATHER, they will perform virtually same if they have the same amount of insulation.  Because the thermal mass of an ICF is isolated, it is of little benefit in this situation.  The "conventional" poured in place solution with exterior insulation has the thermal mass where you want it (on the inside) where it will have some benefit, especially if you want to capitalize on passive solar......advantage to "conventional" for winter energy performance.

The thermal mass of ICF is a benefit when the daily highs are above the interior temp and the lows are below the interior temp. 

In a hot , hot environment, skin loads are usually smaller than solar and internal loads and it is more R value sensitive...little thermal mass benefit for ICF.

In a continuously conditioned space, thermal mass is best placed on the inside, but it is also useful in ICFs under some conditions.

The energy saving benefits that everyone observes from IFCs are because they are very tightly constructed and because they have a high R value (in that order, I believe).  I do not totally discount the thermal mass benefits of ICF, but thermal mass benefit is very small compared to the tightness and R value.

Some studies ...

CMHC December 2007 - Instrumented ICF building - "No thermal mass impact or higher effective insulation level was observed"

*NAHB Research Center Study 1999 - Instrumented ICF and stick houses and computer modeling - "The BLAST modeling program produced very similar results to actual energy end use.  The results suggest that the contribution of thermal mass and groundcoupled effects to overall energy efficiency of the ICF homes was not significant."

*ORNL, Kosny et al, 1999 - Hot box tests and computer modeling -  The (ICF) thermal mass benefits are most apparent in warm and temperate climates and least apparent in cold climates. 

*These studies were cited in "Investigation of Concrete Wall Systems for Reducing Heating and Cooling Requirements in Single Family REsidences" 2004, Ian Doebbler, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, which is 228 pages of interesting, but VERY dry reading.  His modeling also confirmed these concepts.

All of these discussions are a bit "intellectual."  I think Chris Cavala said this was a "Ford and Chevy" issue.  He is right.  From a practical standpoint, attention to windows, doors, details at roof, slab, etc. are more important for energy conservation than whether it is ICF, SIP, stick, etc.  Make it tight with lots of insulation and you win! 

Bruce

Jim

Talk to TF Vertical ICF's. I have been talking to them over the last year or so and while you can adapt their current product to have only exterior insulation, they are planning to release a new product that will do exactly what you are looking for.

slenzen, there was a terrific thread on this website three four years back in which a "Dr. Envelope" held forth on the various systems that put the mass on the inside and the foam on the outside. Here is a link: http://www.greenbuildingtalk.com/Forums/tabid/53/forumid/4/tpage/2/view/Topic/postid/773/Default.aspx Back then, he didn't find any commercial cast in place system that a DIYer couldn't match in effectiveness at less cost.
I explored the notion of putting up a wall with metal studs, threading rebar through it, attaching high-rib metal lathe to the inside, and foam and more lathe to the outside. Metal lathe is the 2x8 stamped mesh you put under stucco. High rib lathe has what amounts to 3/8" hat channels stamped in it every four inches running along its length for greater rigidity. Fill it with concrete; stucco one side and plaster the other. Alas steel prices were outrageous at the time. If memory serves, I also found some controversy over embedding light galvanized steel in concrete. (The studs would be irrelevant after the concrete set if you stitched the two lathe surfaces together by other means.) I too was underwhelmed by the cast in place systems available 18 months ago. But I still think the answer to the affordable, green home is in there somewhere.
That said, you need passive solar for this to work well outside the southwest. I dare say, jmagill, there are more building sites where passive solar isn't possible than sites where it is. The homeowner on an north-south street in a zero lot line subdivision is SOL, for example, and the guy on an east-west street may need exhibitionist tendencies. Even if the site works, the weather must also cooperate. If you haven't done so, slenzen, download Climate Consultant 4 and see what UCLA's green team recommends for your part of the world. If the answer is insulation and lots of it, hey, ICF is a fine answer. So is SIP.

"That said, you need passive solar for this to work well outside the southwest. I dare say, jmagill, there are more building sites where passive solar isn't possible than sites where it is. The homeowner on an north-south street in a zero lot line subdivision is SOL, for example, and the guy on an east-west street may need exhibitionist tendencies"

I agree. My neighbor built in the trees, his house would not work well for this application. In that case I would have a hard decsion choosing between SIPs for super insulation and ICF's for for protection( his choice).

Each location will have different needs and financial components. Having the correct information for all possibilities makes the final choice easier.

Thanks Todd for that link, my head is spinning! LOL

I hadn't realized until I looked again that a whole category of cement building systems appears to have disappeared from the the portland cement association website: http://www.cement.org/homes/ch_buildsys.asp. These would be the stay-in-place forming systems that Dr. Envelope wrote were easy to replicate by DIYers, and that I described as an intriguing deadend in my quest for the affordable green home. I guess it isn't hard to understand what happened, but it is disturbing nonetheless. Are we limited to housing answers that have a 15 percent profit margin or better? Dr. Envelope, where are you?

I think this discussion is good, which was the intent. I do detect an underlying assumption that the laws of thermodynamics are being ignored. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics defines these laws very well. Let's, for the sake of arguement, make an assumption that no system "produces" energy from "nothing". In "all systems" you get out what you put in. Heat can be stored in "high thermal mass" (HTM) but the energy has to be put into the HTM. This is true for SIPS, ICF, std. framing, or exterior insulated poured in place (PIP) structures.

"When two systems are put in contact with each other, there will be a net exchange of energy between them unless or until they are in thermal equilibrium, that is, they are at the same temperature. While this is a fundamental concept of thermodynamics, the need to state it explicitly as a law was not perceived until the first third of the 20th century, long after the first three laws were already widely in use, hence the zero numbering. The Zeroth Law asserts that thermal equilibrium, viewed as a binary relation, is an equivalence relation." wikipedia

This means that all homes are energy systems seeking equilibrium to the largest system "the exterior". If no energy is added, the largest system wins over time, always! I think we all are in violent agreement with these undeniable laws. This then, begs the question, what building system provides the "best" cost benefit ratio? This is dependant on too many variables and perspectives. For a builder who is turning the house for profit, he will build to the market, and this may suffice for the owner and the builder. For a builder/owner, who sees his house as a science experiement, and wishes to extend his stewardship to a global audience, the perspective and variables change. In either case, the thermodymanic laws do not change, only the extended arguements over perpsective. :)

Thanks for the tip. I will put this in my portfolio for investigation. Just for your information, I've found a contractor who uses the "Precise Forming System" or aluminum forms near my constuction location. He has built many PIP residential and commercial walls. He installs the insulation inside the form so that the exterior foam is held in place by ties in the concrete. However, we haven't talked price. One of my issues is that I would like the bldg. proces for drying the house out to be fairly quick. I will then finish the house myself. There is a video at precise forms, which always makes everything look easy, but if this is cost competitive, it is finished in 10 days, along with my footing, foundation, slab, walls. cheers.

New Questions: does anyone know of any articles written about the psi curing rates for ICF vs an RCF wall. please i just really want to locate legitimate articles or literature on this, i know that ICF cures out much higher, but i need the "concrete" information source not alot of opinions. hey thanks again