I am not a DYI. I would like to build a concrete home. I need to decide concrete vs. standard wood framing before I can work with my architect on design. My problem, there are too many products to choose from. Also, I am in Kansas City, MO, where I am having a hard time finding a contractor. It seems each company can only recommend one choice, which I am uncomfortable with when bidding out the project. The three companies that I have contacted so far are FoxBlocks, ARXX, and Thermomass. Any suggestions?

FoxBlocks and Arxx are somewhat similar ICF products. Thermomass is a very different type of system although it does have a poured in place system as well. All three are way better than standard wood framing. Emphasis on "way". I have my favorite block but won't bring it up here. What you might do is get turn key numbers from a few installers using ICFs you (and they) like. Some blocks are cheaper but cost a lot more to install. Regards.

sleepycorn,

Since you are so close to Bates City, MO, you should compare Precise Forms EASI-Wall system against THERMOMASS.  At least the shipping should be a lot less and any company that has forms can use the EASI-Wall system.  THERMOMASS is a great system but EASI-Wall promises to require less labor on site.

Is shipping really that much a part of the materials cost that I would choose one system in IA over one basically in town?

Easy to figure out your fav, but since you are not in Kansas City, do you recommend contacting the company for their contractor recommendations? I would rather have a personal recommendation for a particular contractor who is well known to be good at a particular system. Have enjoyed learning from many of your other previous posts.

alton - how would the layman compare the two products?

sleepycorn,

Transportation cost should always be considered.  Some building systems will require more than one truck so distance does make a difference when paying by the mile.  Most companies that I deal with will give an intemized quote that among other things will show the cost for transportation.  Depending upon distance and the number of trucks involved, the transportation cost can easily add $1500 to $3000 to a system's cost. 

Various alternative building systems require varying amounts of skill.  As a general rule, it is important to use a contractor that has been trained to use the chosen system.  However, some systems such as EASI-Wall inserts can be used by any contractor that has experience with using metal forms for concrete walls.  The same can not be said about using SIPS or ICF.  Do not misunderstand me.  I like and have used SIPS, ICF, and many other systems with trained and un-trained contractors.  I always try to use systems that will fit within the budget and are readily available in my area.  If I want to use a system that is not readily available in my area, I try to get enough training so that I can supervise the project.  This has worked well for me since I am free to hire a crew that wants to learn a new system.  Oftentimes a crew that has never used a new system will not know how to bid the job.  In those cases, the crew can be hired at a daily rate.

I do not have a good answer for you about how to compare two products or building systems.  I specialize in using new products and systems so my mind works in that direction.  The best advice that I can give a novice is that they should research various systems that fall within the budget.  Then either get some training on using the new system or find someone local that can assist you.

Reminder:  Since I retired from teaching in the School of Architecture at Auburn University in 2004 I have donated many hours to assisting homeowners (and a few builders) to doing interesting projects.  Anyone wanting to build a new home in my area and use an alternative building system should feel free to contact me.  This is my way of giving back.  References are available upon request.

I was in the same boat as you, in the mid west there is a lack of "experienced" icf guys...... I found a guy I felt I could trust, meet with him three times, went to his projects, talked to his previous customers, and when with him.....

I was also concerned with the kind of bloc as well, but in the end went with Nudura, not because I thought it was better or worse than other bloc, but because the ICF sub I anted to work with had a lot of experience with it and he felt most comfortable with it

In my opinion experience is the key

And after I thought about it, I said, why am I worried about the bloc anyway, would any of us normal home buyers every ask the builder what kind of nails, drywall or where they get there wood from ? No you make your decision based on there previous work

OK when I built my home I had the following issues

LOCAL INSPECTORS : They just don't see this and come up with goofy things, for me they included
I HAD TO DRYWALL MY BASEMENT WALLS, because in a fire they thought it would catch fire...btw, the foam will melt before it burns, so I had to stick more flammable drywall on top of my foam : )
I have a 2 story ICF home, had to get an engineer to sign off on the design to meet a state code regarding sheer wall heights made of concrete
Insurance : All the bloc guys rave about special insurance rates for ICF, in the Midwest, they don't know what this stuff is, so you wont get some uber deal on insurance, in the Midwest they classify it as masonry.
ARCHITECT : You will have to hire an architect even if your using a "stock plan" because every town has different codes, and you'll want one handy to make changes. I got lucky, I had a friendly and knowledgeable architect who got the whole idea, and didnt charge me an arm and a leg for little changes to make the inspectors and county planning people happy : )

The Good things about ICF

I live on 20 acres of open farm ground, and when it gets windy, wow it is soo nice to have an ICF home, it really does keep the wind and noise out
Utility bills, my previous home was 1200 sq feet, my ICF home is 2200 sq feet, plus a finished basement, and my utility bills are the same... so twice the house for the same utility bill, not too bad

The decision to go ICF is a personal one, you can stick build a house and uber insulate it for less, you have more design options with stick built, you have more contractors to choose from with stick built, etc.etc....

For me, I choose ICF because I wanted a real house... I went thru soo many stick built homes and they just felt flimsy to me, and when weather gets bad, you just feel safer knowing there is 8 inches of concrete and steel separating you from the rest of the world.... and after seeing the mess in Japan, you have to ask yourself.

If natural or man made disaster hit, where would you want to be, a house built of 2x4's and nails or of 8-12 inches of concrete and steel ?


My suggestion, go tour a few ICF homes on a windy or stormy day, you'll feel the difference

Where in the midwest did you build? Any where close to Kansas City, MO?

> New 1 thick 4 core blocks in California - to use or not to use?Jump to first new post

On the neighboring thread I just spelled it all out. Wall thickness and flexibility and logistics of material supply. In my opinion that's the key differences between wood frame v.s ICF. If you have a smaller house then the wall thickness of ICF's takes away from the size of your insides. The right sized ICF block may or may not be available locally. Where I am at ICF's sell for $16 apiece or $25 with delivery. They come in pallets of 12. You cannot just go down to the corner lumber shop and get a single 2x4 for $2 apiece with ICF's. Also the concrete barrel trucks do not sell less than 10 cubic yards and require a pumper and charge $5/minute for overtime. Ordering sand with delivery requires 12 ton = 8 cubic yard minimum orders. With ICF's you still have extremely difficult flexibility and logistics concerns that have not been worked out by the industry.

By the way, while we're on the subject... A pallet of 12 ICF's covers roughly 64 square feet. A styrofoam shop in our area sells 2" thick 4'x8' sheets of styrofoam used to insulate houses for $12. So the styrofoam in a pallet of 12 ICF's costs roughly $50. At $25/apiece the ICF pallet costs you $300. You are paying $300 for styrofoam worth $50 and the embedded interconnecting plastic inserts. The plastic inserts I would guess are made in slave labor camps in China and cost the companies pennies apiece.

Some of them may be made by Chinese laborers-- even some metal cross-tie systems are made by Chinese, but Polycrete products are 100% made in North America. The rest of your analysis is too bizarre to even comment upon.

JPM1730: EPS emits toxic gases and smoke when in direct contact with flame- far more smoke, and of fire higher toxicity than a burning paper facer on gysum wallboard. The gypsum doesn't burn, and has both thermal mass and an R value, giving the EPS a much longer heat-up period in a fire situation. When EPS does catch fire it's usually the smoke flashing over first, and the flame spread rate on EPS without fire retardents can be quite rapid. Polyisocyanurate is much harder to ignite, but it too emits toxic products in direct contact with flame.

There are good reasons for the thermal barrier requirements over foam insulation in the building codes, but they've been relaxed a bit in recent years for crawlspaces and attics without ignition sources, but not for full basements.

Edited to add:

 EPS flame test demo with/without fire retardents

a less formal test using a chunk of EPS insulation

Fortunately SFAIK all ICFs contain fire retardents which would limit flame spread (a 15 or 30 minute exposure to direct flame on a treated ICF might be an useful test) but doesn't really deal with the toxic gas issues.

The gasses emitted from burning EPS are no more toxic than those contained in wood smoke. All ICFs sold in the USA must submit to the "burn test". You should do your research and be sure to use an ICF that has proper levels of fire retardant. The EPS in such an ICF will not burn, it will just melt away.

> The rest of your analysis is too bizarre to even comment upon

Thanx for insulting me.

You offer no other information worth anything, but you sure put me in my place.

By the way, your information is not worthless in and of itself. It's completely worthless because you are in Canada judging from your website being in French. Now, do you want to hear something really bizarre. Call up some shipping companies and ask them how much it would cost to ship your "Made in North America" product from Canada to California? Even if your product was absolutely free it would not be cost effective for a customer to do that.

There-in lies the difference between you and me. I live in the real world. You live in the world of marketing brochures generated by your own company.

Jack, I imagine you're right about all that.

Bruce, sad thing is if the ICF business got its act together we might all be building ICF houses and wood frame would be history.   For that to happen, the industry would have to standardize models and produce interchangeable (among companies and core thicknesses) products.   As it is now there are about 10-15 manufacturers and each and every one of them has a completely different system which is not interchangeable with any other manufacturer's products or even its own products.   As a result transportation becomes a big expense.   As it is the industry is esoteric.  It's a niche market.   It is tiny and it doesn't appear to be growing.

While we're on the subject.   Here's another bizarre ICF story.   Since you can't just buy ICF's from your corner lumber and hardware store you have to order more than you need.  If you use www.crazedlist.org to search for ICF's nationwide you'll notice that here and there people have leftovers after projects are finished that they want to get rid of.    The leftovers are worthless because in any one particular spot you won't be able to sell them and due to the size of the individual ICF's the packages are too big to ship in a normal way.  The shipping will cost you more than the ICF!  So on crazedlist I found a guy in Tucson, Arizona who had 2.5 pallets of 4" Reward blocks left over.   He dropped his price and finally wanted $50 for them because it was just taking up space in his garage.    I figured that's $100 for gas round trip from Southern California.   So I took a road trip one weekend.   I advertised on craigslist rideshare that I had an empty 4'x8' trailer going to Tucson and some hippy paid me $50 for gas and space in my trailer to take him and his boxes of junk and bike.    On the way back a female student I met on craigslist rideshare paid me $25 for gas and she needed a place to stay before her plane leaves the airport in two days.   So she ended up staying at my place;)   To make a long story short, I managed to get roughly $700 worth of ICF's for $50 and... drumroll ... got laid in the process.    As you can see, along with the challenges, come rewards;)   Reward blocks that is:(

Well, Jack, I swore I was not going to reply to you any more, but you keep sucking me in with your crazy stories. First of all, there are about 60 different ICF products out there. Also, while the construction business has shrunk to a fraction of its previous size, ICF market share has risen to the point that it's considered mainstream. In the midwest and the east, that is. I have an idea that there is not much ICF work being done on the west coast, but I could be wrong. Hawaiian market is good.
You have hit at least one nail on the head, transport is indeed a big issue. Most ICFs pack about 3,500 to 4,000 sqft per truckload. Knock-down blocks more and Polycrete Big Block packs 6,144 sqft to a truckload. As diesel costs rise, new logistics strategies need to be devised.
I personally think that the greatest hindrance to market growth is the perception that ICF construction is a DIY project. We don't sell our product to DIYers. In the US, Polycrete ICFs are only installed by certified installers. And since almost all of our projects are commercial, our installers are nearly all commercial concrete contractors. Do it yourselfers will continue to have issues with running short or leftovers unless they purchase from a local distributor. Just another reason to hire a professional.

60 products would be about right.    I wrote 10-15 manufacturers.    Each one of them has roughly 3-5 products.   In Southern California when I call the county building and safety I have to explain to the staff what ICF stands for.   They don't recognize the acronym.   Nevertheless one would think that ICF's would suit our climate better since the South West is dry yet there are temperature fluctuations.   I have heard ICF's don't do so well in wet climates where they can get moldy and fungus grows on them.   As for shipping.  Shipping would not be a problem if the products were standardized.    We have a BuildBlock plant not two hours drive away.  The problem is like I mentioned, flexibility.   They only make 6" cores nearby and I need 4" cores.   BuildBlock by the way is one of the few manufacturers that I have seen that are working on a solution to this problem.   Their new BuildLock system has promise.   You buy the styrofoam panels then you can have the different sized inserts mixed and matched and shipped for cheap because the inserts are not heavy or bulky.   Now you mentioned only working with professionals and discounted DIY's.   I hired professionals during the first part of my construction project.  I realized then why the industry is in such dire straits.   The rest of us have something called foreign competition to deal with.   It keeps our prices in line and our heads on straight.   So here's the deal.  I was paying these guys 3-4 times per day what I was making.   In the old days loans were plenty and contractors and professionals did everything and earned lots and lots of money and no doubt did things well.   Those days are over, at least for now.   DIY's are the only ones left building anything today.   If you look at how much these contractors make, paying them with loans is the only way to sustain that kind of price.   At a certain point in this project I slammed the brakes on development.   I said if I'm going to be paying somebody 3-4 times what I make, that's stupid.   I'll just do it myself on weekends.   And you know what?   It's worked out so far.   This stuff isn't rocket science.   That said, stop whining about DIY's because unless somebody opens the loan spigot, and starts hiring pizza delivery men to evaluate and process loan applications again, we're the future in construction.

Jack, First, ICFs do fine in humid climates, as long as you understand that water is the enemy and plan for it.

Second, why would any manufacturer "standardize" their product so that it could be substituted by/for another manufacturer's? That's just bad business and defies logic. In the world of branding, you want to differentiate your product so it is perceived to be better than the competition's. Otherwise, it just becomes a race to the price bottom and no one wins that game.

Thirdy, I guess you're talking about a knock-down block. There are a numer of them out there, some better than others. Polycrete makes a knock down form called Flex850. Each panel is 1' x 8', cross ties are 4mm steel wire, come in four standard widths and and can be made to any width you need. As I mentiond in a previous post, knock down blocks are more efficient to ship, but most are more labor intensive as you end up with some kid sitting on a spackle bucket assembling icfs for days. Life is full of trade offs.

Posted By jacktca on 18 Mar 2011 08:28 PM
....BuildBlock by the way is one of the few manufacturers that I have seen that are working on a solution to this problem.   Their new BuildLock system has promise.   You buy the styrofoam panels then you can have the different sized inserts mixed and matched and shipped for cheap because the inserts are not heavy or bulky...

Lite-Form has been doing that for years.

http://www.liteform.com/Lite_Form/information.html