I would have him check again, when I ordered last week it had just dropped. You never know you may save a couple of bucks or at least could pit one against the other and work them down a little.

We are considering Polysteel 3000 waffle grid Icf block. Is the fact that the foam varies from 1.5" to 3.5" + an issue for the electrical contractor? how do you attch an electrical box if the foam thickness is 'uneven" and you are or aren't up against the concrete?

It is in most places. They require minimum setbacks and they will not pass with out furring out walls.

newbiejohn, look at it from a different point of view. not heating degrees but kWh per square meter per year. The kWh in most of the US and Canada is at a minimum of about 1000kWh per year per square meter. The energetic requirement for any house, building to be zero energy is 250kWh at the most - so only about a quarter the energy that the sun gives you. You are using this energy to create a thermal or temperature barrier reducing the delta T to 2 instead of whatever it is in Siberia or Africa.
Dianavoss, the building code according to ICC,IBC is that the electrical wire needs to be embedded into the wall by 1.5". I have to agree with tdbuilder that furring out would be necessary unless you set conduits into concrete cavity and pull the wire through after you had poured the concrete.

We're building with all ICF construction (Logix with neopor foam) in Northern NY (also 9000 degree heating days) and we're part of a research project through NYSERDA which is promoting best building practices for energy efficient houses. The roof will be SIP. The floors (basement and living) are concrete (stained) with in-floor heating. We're also using InLine windows and I've been to the factory twice so I now finally understand how they attach. We've been told we will spend less money on our heating (propane boiler) than we will on our electrical each month during heating season.

The InLine windows come in a rather "ala carte" style. They can be ordered with "brick mold" which provides a colored aluminum wrap (for lack of a better word) around the external edge of your window opening so that the siding butts up to that edge and your windows don't need to be trimmed out on the exterior wall. If you want to recess your windows a bit, you can also get aluminum external extensions (I think 3 inch recess is the max they carry). To attach the windows, order them with the anchors. The anchors are strips of metal, roughly 2"X4" or so (probably a bit bigger, I'm trying to picture them) set 4 inches from each corner and then I think they are attached to the outside of the frame every 24 inches. Those get screwed into your window bucks after you do the shimming. The space between the frame and the buck get filled with expanded foam. Then caulk all the way around. You don't need to use nailing fins like Anderson windows. I have a couple of photos of the brick mold and anchors but I can't figure out how to insert them into this post. Oh,and if you get the brick mold, you need a slightly larger rough opening for your windows because the way the brick mold attaches to the window units.

As for what to watch out for, the ICF's have to be PERFECTLY leveled and square after the second course and then the walls have to be plumb (according to the mfg instructions) before the pour and watch that they remain plumb during it. We had a great pour for the basement but discovered that one set of braces were old and rusty and were difficult to adjust so my husband had to do some quick external bracing on that one wall because the wall began to pull out a little bit. I would also recommend getting the installation book from the manufacturer and memorize it. There is a lot that our local building supplier(who also builds with ICFs) told us to do that was totally incorrect and my husband found out by reading the book and cross referencing everything.

Hope this helps a bit. I'm not a contractor but I've been living with this project for the past year so I think I've picked up a lot of info. The house is expensive to build but for us, a lot of that is because of the suspended concrete floor for the main living area. It takes a lot of steel to support all of that weight but we have a 16 foot sliding door going into the living room and 6 foot sliding doors in each bed room, all facing south, to pick up the passive solar gain in the winter. Good luck!