This forum has been a great help to me. The only two construction types I knew before I came here was stick and cavity wall.:-)
I decided I want a brick or concrete house. Or a combination of both.

ICF
ICFs are great. Good strength, good insulation, etc combined in one.
The drawbacks are that it's hard to fasten heavy things to it. It requires finishing to to make it look good and protect the insulation.

Brick cavity wall.
The cavity can be made as wide as desired, so 'any' R-value is possible. Attaching heavy things to it no issue. When the exterior wall is brick nothing extra is needed on the outside of the wall. Wallpaper can be stuck on the inside.
I think this is the most costly type of wall. Mainly because of the huge labor costs.

< Concrete cavity wall
Ideal on the interior side. Needs some sort of finishing on the exterior side. Stucco for example.

------------- What is the estimated all-in cost of each type of wall? Material + transport + labor + whatever. The outside part should be completely finished. The inside part ready for wallpaper

Brick veneer is relatively inexpensive where I live. It costs approximately $4/sq.ft. for labor and materials*. This is on par with higher end vinyl siding installation or any other siding material.

*This is based on king size brick in which it takes 5 brick to cover 1 sq. ft and the cost of the brick is $400/1000 and the installation cost is ~$0.40 per brick - YMMV.

When you say "Brick Cavity Wall", what exactly are you referring to? Two wythes of brick with insulation in the middle?  If so, this is not common in residential construction in the US, but you may see it in commercial construction.    In my area, this would be a brick veneer exterior with either rigid foam or OSB sheating (or combination thereof with structural OSB on the corners and rigid foam in the field) over a wood framed 2x4 or 2x6 wall (in commercial construction these would be replaced with steel studs) with cellulose or fiberglass cavity insulation and 1/2" drywall on the inside. This is very common in my area (Arkansas) and one of the less expensive building methods. Most new builder spec homes here are built this way.

When you say "Brick Cavity Wall", what exactly are you referring to? Two wythes of brick with insulation in the middle?

2 parallel walls with a space between them.
The space usually is filled with some sort of insulation.
The walls are 2 structual brick walls.
Or 1 structural concrete wall and a non structural brick wall.


Brick is very labor intensive so new houses very often use concrete. In large projects with lot of similar houses the concrete is prefab. Usually with piping for electricity poured in the concrete. Bolted together. It's almost build as fast as the trucks can unload.


It's not thst I absolutely want that kind of construction. It's just what I know best. The 2 advantages I see in it are:

- The R value can be about anything because the cavity can be wide.
- About anything can be fastened to it without special fastening strips as with ICF.


Whatever I build it must be maintainance free. I want zero worry about bugs, rodents, moidt/rot, storm.


I'm sure I can find a contractor who builds according t my specs. But that may get beyond my budget. I just have the leave my old thinking patterns behind when immigrating.......

Posted By NewHoosier on 30 Nov 2014 01:31 PM

When you say "Brick Cavity Wall", what exactly are you referring to? Two wythes of brick with insulation in the middle?

2 parallel walls with a space between them.
The space usually is filled with some sort of insulation.
The walls are 2 structual brick walls.
Or 1 structural concrete wall and a non structural brick wall.


Brick is very labor intensive so new houses very often use concrete. In large projects with lot of similar houses the concrete is prefab. Usually with piping for electricity poured in the concrete. Bolted together. It's almost build as fast as the trucks can unload.


It's not thst I absolutely want that kind of construction. It's just what I know best. The 2 advantages I see in it are:

- The R value can be about anything because the cavity can be wide.
- About anything can be fastened to it without special fastening strips as with ICF.


Whatever I build it must be maintainance free. I want zero worry about bugs, rodents, moidt/rot, storm.


I'm sure I can find a contractor who builds according t my specs. But that may get beyond my budget. I just have the leave my old thinking patterns behind when immigrating.......

Unlike the temperate zones of norther Europe, in a colder-winter climate you can't fill the cavity completely with insulation without risking freeze/thaw spalling of the brick.  The brick needs to be able to dry into the cavity.  That is especially true if the insulation is vapor permeable, with moisture moving from the warmer-moister side of the assembly into the cavity.  The vented air gap functions as both a vapor barrier and a capillary break in terms of moisture transfer between the sides.  In summertime humidity it limits the vapor drive from sun-on-brick toward the air conditioned interior too. 

In the southern US you can sometimes get away with a zero-gap cavity wall using low permeance foam, but from US climate zone 4A on up it gets riskier the colder it gets.  Some in NY have successfully experimented with cellulose(!) in unvented cavity walls, but it would put a fairly high latent load on the air conditioning, with potential mold or paint blistering issues on the interior finish wall.

In most cavity wall construction in the US the exterior wythe of brick is not fully structural, and must be mechanically tied to the structural wall on the other side of the cavity with masonry ties. The thicker you make the insulation, the longer the ties. Ties come in several standard lengths, but not long enough for true high-R assemblies.

A major performance issue with cavity walls is the large thermal bridge at the foundation, since all wythes must rest on the same solid foundation. I know of no really great solutions for that.

I'm in the same boat. Want a wall that's indistrustable and completely maintenance free and high performance to boot. Unfortunately I chose a 2x6 with rigid foam sheathing and stucco. I got quotes of 22 to 25 a square foot finished.

So instead of brick, how about using 4x8x16 cinder blocks. An outer layer and an inner layer. You can fill the cavity with 2" of rigid foam. Stucco is cheaper over cmu than wood.

[quote=Dana1]A major performance issue with cavity walls is the large thermal bridge at the foundation, since all wythes must rest on the same solid foundation. I know of no really great solutions for that.I think that's so for any construction without insulation on the inside. The only partial solution I see is a foundation way below the frost line.
Anyway from the rest of your post it's clear cavity walls aren't the best choice in Indiana. You wrote about zero-gap cavity. I'm not convinced they really know, but friends of mine, in Indiana, have a fully brick house that's 3 walls packed together. Even interior walls are a feet thick. Original wooden flooring of a few inches thic. The house old but still in prime state. Considering its age I doubt it has vapor barriers because they didn't exist back then.

Back to the cavity walls. Doesn't ICF have a similar problem? Its concrete core stands on the cold foundation. That way the exterior insulation layer is bypassed.

An ICF has the vapor retardency of the foam, and it doesn't have a single-wythe brick exterior. The exterior foam keeps the concrete warm enough to not suffer spalling degradation in most climates where humans live, even if it's moisture content were pretty high. If using a brick-veneer on the exterior of an ICF it's still prudent to have at least a 1" space between the brick & foam, with weep-holes in the bottom and open (or vented) at the top to allow convective air exchange.

A multi-wythe solid brick wall can buffer a lot more moisture than single-wythes separated by insulation, and the heat loss keeps the exterior bricks warmer & drier than they will be in an insulated cavity wall. Triple wythe solid walls can still have spalling issues in climates colder than Indiana, but they truly SUCK from a thermal performance point of view. Thermal performance gets better if the wall is a half-meter thick or greater, due to the insulation value and thermal mass of the brick. I've been in my brother's antique solid quadruple wythe house in St. Louis when it was -15C outside- the interior temperature of those walls was less than 5C, with condensation forming even on the interior. But the exterior of the lossy solid brick seems to hold up better than unvented insulated brick veneers, which I've personally seen with spalling issues at the cold edge of US climate zone 4A (just north of NY city), where backsplash at the drip line kept the lower portion of the brick fairly saturated.