This is for my personal house that my wife and I are designing. 

I am comparing ICF, Steel framing with sprayed in expanding foam insulation, and wood framing with sprayed in expanding foam insulation. 

If I go with the steel or wood framing, I am also looking at 2x4 or 2x6 wall studs. 

What do you think for a cost to return comparison?  I do not know if I can afford ICF up front. 



A builder that I have talked to said that 2x4 wood framing with sprayed in expanding foam insulation is the most cost effective option. 

Please help. 

Why aren't you considering SIPS? I would also avoid steel framing unless there is a thermal break somewhere.

We're in the same decision stage, although only comparing wood framing with spray foam vs ICF.
Our local ICF experts are telling us that ICF cost is only about 3-5% more than stick built with standard batt insulation. Spray foam is about 3 x the cost of standard insulation so would actually be a more expensive option compare to ICF for our house design.
That and the fact that stick built has no protection against thermal bridging of the studs make our decision a no brainer.

I am not looking at SIP's because I do not see them having a huge advantage over wood with spray foam. 


Orbit, do you mind telling me where you are and who your ICF people are? 

We want to go with Stucco, so ICF will save us a little on the stucco cost (since we have less prep).  I am hoping that the cost difference between wood and ICF is not going to break the bank. 

Thanks

Here's a few: Stronger, No Thermal Bridging, and Faster Installation. A stud at R-1 per inch, is where your heat will be going.

Spray foam is a good product, but SIPS are a better solution.

I'm in Eugene, Oregon and have only spoken in detail with two ICF builders - Jerry Spivey of Better Builders of Oregon who uses Logix and Stuart Swearengin of Swearengin Family builders who uses Amvic. Both are distributors of their product too.

Our designer is a builder too - wood frame - and he can't seem to figure out how they are saying the ICF cost is only 5% overall for the project.

We want to use ICF but don't know if the numbers are real world and accurate - I'm going to talk so some of the owners of ICf homes built by these two builders.
At this point, the worst case scenario is that we design the house with ICF, the bids come in way high and we end up redrawing the plans for stick built for another $3000

We have done cost and life-cycle cost analysis on all of the systems described here and have found by stick framing (2x4 or 2x6 stud, with resilient channel to form a thermal break) by far the most economical and low-impact solution. SIPS are actually quite costly in any situation other than a simple flat roof. Also, there is the added inconvenience that the design cannot change after the sips are made. If a homeowner realizes, oh, a window should be over there, the only answer is "sorry, no". ICFs are great for foundations, but an all-concrete house can be quite costly because of the amount of bracing that has to go up to support the foam forms with taller walls: time and energy spent here quickly adds up. ICFs are difficult to remodel. AND, early studies estimate that concrete walls contain 10x the amount of embodied energy as a foam-filled stick frame wall.

We are going to use a Thermomass system for our earth berm house. It is an 10" concrete wall which has 2" insulation sandwiched by 4" concrete on each side and is poured in place. We have utilized a passive solar design so only the 3 walls that will be bermed will use this system so our south wall can transfer heat. Have you looked into this yet?

We have a house design already.... it is a Spanish style.

One story, 2800 square feet living space with the tallest ceiling of 16 feet in the entry way. One room is 12 feet high and the rest are 10'. The roof is not all that simple. The house is oriented 57.3 degrees from the front being due North, but that is the way the lot is oriented. The lot is very heavily wooded, so the sides of the house will always be in shade (unless we remove a lot of trees). There is a plan for a shop that is oriented due South for future solar panels. We don't know when we will build it.

This may help gear the answers towards this style house.

Ramdough, yep, with that style house I would 100% recommend the same as your builder you mentioned in your first post: a 2x4 or 2x6 stud wall with expanding foam would be the most economical to build - from both a labor and materials standpoint. The roof could also be a foam filled, cavity or, if you have attic, put the foam on the ceiling side of the attic and vent it. If you are interested in increasing thermal performance by breaking the thermal barrier, the easiest/cheapest solution could be to use 1 1/2" resilient channel (drywall "hat" channel") on which you hang the drywall - filled to the brim with foam. Or you could build 2 2x4 walls with a gap, all filled up with fiberglass or foam insulation, so no studs touch to make a path. This method was used at the NREL Habitat for Humanity zero energy house here in boulder and works very well. As an added bonus you get lovely deep window sills for plants and things (wall assembly = 1' thick). NREL house: http://www.nrel.gov/buildings/zero_energy.html

I'm not sure what a roof selection has to do with using SIPS for the walls.

That's just plain silly. If the plans aren't correct, any homeowner will see additional costs to fix. And, that's no matter what type of construction is used. Also, just as a stick framed structure can be modified, so can a SIP structure. Hmmm. Or maybe I've done the impossible?

Here is another take on the stick framed home. Go to Tauntons web site and link to Fine Homebuildings "breaktime" There you will find a lot of information on home building. Go to the search box and input "Mooney Wall" and follow the discussions there. That would be my choice of stick framing.
Jim

Mooney wall looks interesting tho slightly complicated. Personally I think the best way to combat the thermal bridging issue is a party wall. We use them in multi-family dwellings mainly for noise, but they work well to up the R-value and not allow heat to make it's way through from exterior to interior sheeting since no stud is actually touching both except for the top and bottom plates. Insulators hate it, so do framers, but it's a logical solution if you're still convinced stick framing has it's advantages. Check out "party wall framing" on Google images and go to the apacad.org result - that's a great example of one party wall - there's multiple applications and styles.
Panelcrafters please - don't advertise and don't be critical. There is no one building style or technique that fits every person's taste or budget. I think in the case where boulderbuilder was talking about a costly roof is the very large expense of SIPS panels being used to create an R44 or R48 roof panel system that is 10" wide or more in which case they still need engineered trusses, etc. I love SIPS for exterior walls but for my dime (and shingles' sake) would prefer eng. roof truss with normal roof sheeting and blown in insulation so attic space matches outside temp vs. having a warm attic and alot of insulation butted right up against my shingles. would love to hear thoughts on that tho.

Personally, I think that Rastra block are much much better than icfs, the cost quoted on a recent job was over $9000 for ICF, and in Rastra , $3100. A lot of "green" products are simply a definition that allows companies to attach a higher cost, playing on the feelings of those who truely want to do the right thing. The greenest building there is is reusing existing materials, buildings etc. I am moving three 100 plus year old barns, slated for demolition, across country to stand them back up for continued use. How else can you get a 5000 sf building worth of lumber for free.
look to rastra, sips and reused lumber.
just my soapbox....i'll step off, as it is my first post.

ramdough;

 

steel sips are much more affordable than ICFs, OSB SIPs are OK if your not in a termite area

I am a commercial contractor and I live in an ICF home I built. I have an ICF (Reward) sub I use regularly, he did the ICF for me 7 years ago. I am planning to build again in 3-4 months.
Talking with my ICF guy, he couldn't justify me doing it again. Cost of concrete was $50/cyd, now it is about $95/cyd. Forms are also way up.

That said - I LOVE my ICF walls. Sister built two years ago, she had termites in 6 months. I use 500 gallons of oil a year to heat about 3300 sft in northeast PA. My oil delivery guy asked me if I was buying my oil from someone else (in addition to himself). It's quiet and you don't worry about it falling over. ICF is a huge peace of mind for me.

ICF isn't the cheapest solution in 2007. It depends on what you want. Green? Is it energy effecient - absolutely. Is there more embodied energy in it than anything else - absolutely. If you want to be green buy a house, don't build one.

ramdough try pcoughphlin he is a regular on this site and in your area even though he uses a competitive product, he is in your area he does good work and knows his stuff.