The SCIPS that I've seen use 8" block by different widths with a piece of concrete block truss wire between each section of foam. So 170' x12"=2040"divided by 8"=255 joints with 3/16" truss wire in each joint which gives you 47" of truss wire in the wall area by the height of the wall which I assumed would be 8' maybe higher. I could be wrong I'm a little suspect on my third grade math skills. If they use 10" foam that would cut it down to 37" which would make it a whole lot more effective.

If I use 6000 pieces of 3/16" wire running side-to-side through the foam (seems excessive since there shouldn't be much force trying to separate the wall and the concrete is well bonded to the foam), I get: 6000 * Pie Radius squared = 13"x13" of steel. 12 gauge wire = 5.5"x5.5" and is good for thousands of pounds per square foot of wall delaminating force.

I would focus on heat loss through the windows.

ICFHybrid
Maybe you mean 1500 watts. Correct

Is it a small home or is it a very efficient home?

Small ? Maids and gardeners quarters in the last home I built were as big as the SCIP home I am now building but at 2,400 conditioned sq. ft. its not tiny.

John Clem
Depending of the finish of the ICF SCIP can have a higher sound reduction.

jonr
I'd use active solar, but if you really want passive, then you want the concrete exposed to the sun. SCIPs do this, ICFs don't.

Jonr please explain
How will the exterior finish make a difference if you have enough thermal break?
It was my understanding the shot crete on the out side is for strength.

Alton
Where is Tridipanel manufactured? I am concerned about freight costs.

Made in Mexico/ Baja across the border from California.
That is one of the reasons I made my own panels.

The thermal performance boost of SCIP over ICF isn't huge,
Read conclusion of Oak Ridge National Labs Test of 16 wall configurations, SCIP type wall systems out performs ICFs by 50% if I read it correctly.

smartwall
I'm missing something about the termal performance of SCIPs with the sandwich having block reinforcing wire going from the outside wall surface to the inside wall surface there has to be a problem with conduction lose.

That is a question I have asked with no concrete answer other than when talking to a guy who built and lived in a SCIP home. He claimed was able to leave his house for one month in the winter with a 3 degree drop with the heat shut off.

Alton
Some SCIPS are now using non-conducting (very low conducting) polymer ties instead of galvanized steel wire.
I am told steel is preferred for the strength over the non metal trusses I showed my engineer.
I have not seen anyone using them in the US.

I plan on renting a thermal imagining camera to take pictures when I am finished. I am not sure if the trusses will have enough thermal breaks to show up.

Adding an extra layer of EPS (( $$$$$)) to the exterior would also compensate for some of the EPS that was removed for embedding rebar. (Some EPS has to be removed so that shotcrete can fully cover the rebar used around the openings.)

Again I hope thermal imagining camera will answer that as well.

The panels that I made are 6” between the trusses and 9” of foam for the insulation factor.
So where I removed foam for rebar I still have 7” of EPS.

jonr
I would focus on heat loss through the windows.

Today with temperatures listed below I saw no difference from wall to window on the inside.
Wednesday, when we have colder temps with snow I will shoot windows both inside and out. They are Vinyl windows not cheap or really high end.
I will post up temperature readings as early Thursday morning should get fairly cold. (For Colorado)

Still awaiting exterior doors so existing doors are hollow throw away temp doors.
I was shooting walls and windows with a temperature gun today with no big surprises.
I brought it to track exterior temperatures for finishes we were applying today.
At 8:30
Exterior wall temps were,
Starting at the east wall with full sun 56 degrees,
South wall 54-56 degrees with sun at an angle.
West wall full shade was 48 at south end and 40 at north end
The north wall was a low 36- 38.
Interior wall temperatures were 59 first level (garage), 60 second level and 62 at the third.

I did get a temperature drop to 58 with the heater turned on hi till I found the drywallers or painters were leaving a third level window open.
Now with the heater set on medium temps are low 60s.

I am still waiting for a friend with over a hundred ICF pours under his belt to refute or confirm. That because the concrete is isolated in ICF forms by foam SCIP systems thermal mass is 50% more energy efficient.

Jonr, your doing the cross section of the truss not the total sq suface of the wire. If the 3/16 " wire is 96" high then the total surface area is .1875 x96 =18 sq inches for each truss x the number of truss wire sections used

I guess the bottom line I'm disputing your assertion that a SCIP wall in more effecient than a icf simple because the SCIP wall has a lot of steel in and out that can transfer energy from the inside surface to the outside

SCIP Panel writes:

>The thermal performance boost of SCIP over ICF isn't huge,  Read conclusion of Oak Ridge National Labs Test of 16
>wall configurations, SCIP type wall systems out performs ICFs by 50% if I read it correctly."

SCIP doesn't even outperform a LOW MASS wall at any steady-state R value greater than R15 by 50%, in any climate, in terms of reduction in total heating & cooling energy use, let alone beating an ICF by that much.  (A DBMS of 3 vs. 1.5 vs. 1.0 in a wall system is less consequential than you might think, unless you've made commensurate upgrades on all other aspects of the design.)  The DOE-2 simulations by which the DBMS is assigned is based on a low-mass 1-story rancher of rather arbitrary and simple design (a 1978-vintage theoretical house used solely for academic simulations), and unless you're building THAT HOUSE conclusions about the performance of YOUR house can't and shouldn't be directly inferred by the DBMS in those simulations.  The windows in that model house are real crap compared to what energy-geeks are building with these days, and a simulated DBMS of 3 is really somewhat academic, with HUGE error bars compared to measurable reality. (Model your own design in DOE-2 you really want to know what difference it would make.)  A SCIP roof probably has a bigger overall effect on cooling season performance than SCIP walls.

In terms of energy savings in the simulations, in a heavy cooling-dominated climate the savings using SCIP might hit around 18% to an ICF's 10%:

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/roofs+walls...igure7.pdf  (The black vs. grey bars in the graph.)

So I s'pose that means SCIP actually beats ICF by 100%?

Seriously- if you care about using the interior thermal mass of a building optimally there is no substitute for actually designing it.  DBMS is very squishy number, not to be trusted, since it will vary considerably with both the climate and the actual house design as well as the solar orientation and site-design. Most houses aren't a simple 1-story rectangle.  The ORNL analysis is sort of a "what if all tract housing were built with ..." kind of exercise, but the particulars of the design matter in any real house.

That said, when designing for passive solar heating the availability of the thermal mass in the passive design is very consequential in the passive solar design, and in those cases would outperform ICF (or low-mass systems) by quite a bit- probably MORE than a 50% whole-house performance boost over ICF (unless comparable thermal mass is integrated into interior components in the ICF case.)  With the thermal mass of ICF being isolated from the interior that mass is rendered (mostly) moot, in most- a weak second (or even third) order factor.  Not so for SCIP- it's mass is inherently available for use in passive solar designs.

Jonr, your doing the cross section of the truss not the total sq suface of the wire.

Yes, but it's the right way. A SCIP has so little cross sectional area of wire running side to side (diagonals) that you shouldn't worry about it. Perhaps a drawing helps:



Mesh running in the X and Y plane (ie exclusively on one side or the other and encased in concrete) makes no difference.

For other reasons that aren't clear to me, SCIPs aren't very popular in the US. Probably total cost.

IMO, thermal mass makes little difference (positive or negative) unless you live in certain climates (small percentage of the US, perhaps like the OP) or you insist on passive solar. I completely agree that encasing mass in foam (ICF) makes it less effective.