Hi,

I cut about 10 inspection cuts from the top to the bottom of the wall. I ended up just using a skillsaw and a hammer seemed to work the best. Only took about two hours or so.
Here is a link to the gallery.

http://astro.cisco.ca/gallery3/

Nice job.

can any of you engineers or installers with experience comment on the consolidation of the concrete, it seems the worst of it is localized to the bottom 16-25" but in the one s
pot the formlock seems to be exposed. I know the rebar placement is good because test holes have been drilled and verified.

Don't know your location, but I would wager to say there was snow in the bottom of the forms prior to the pour.

Whatever happened to using Helix instead of rebar?

Good question, Jonr. About the Helix. I think people are just afraid of it. We have seen it permitted on some government ICF projects here in Virginia, but the contractors don't seem to go for it.

Chris Johnson calls it right. Snow and Ice. 
In addition, the aggregate looks to be between 1/2 and 3/4 inch. Am I correct ? Looks a bit harsh to me.
The mix should be 1/2 inch and smaller, with proportioning in the 55 / 45 or 60/40 (fines&sand vs rock).
RM companies hate this ratio because it causes them to use more powder, which is the $ expensive part of the mix.
Whether they had Super P or Air entrainment in the mix, is impossible to say from the pics.
Other than dowels being outside the footprint, you should be able to grout this quite well.
Chemgrout makes a sweet hand operated pump and sells quality packers etc.

the problem is no vibration. so there is honey combing in the wall. The worst of it being in the lower section of the wall. This was poured on a summers day so there was no snow or ice in the forms. The form lock seems to be exposed around the whole top edge as well. The rest of the re-bar has enough cover.

Ouch........ on a summers day. My apologies.

Posted By eric monkman on 16 Apr 2011 06:11 PM
Ouch........ on the summers day. My apologies.

I would still question the proportioning of the mix design.
Vibration is not always required, when the mix is correct.

Getting good concrete consolidation requires several things, a knowledgeable hoseman..one who knows mixes, and can call for vibration if required.
 a good mix, proper pumping speed, slump adjustment before loading concrete into the pump hopper.

True...a pencil vibrator should always be onsite for an ICF pour, no disagreement there :-)

BTW what is the aggregate size in the photos? 

  How many of you ICF installers use a 2 or 2 1/2 inch line pump to place your ICF walls ?
  Those of you that do will recognize the difference between those small line mixes and ones that are supplied to boom pumps.

   More cream and better flowability , right ?

   All concrete is not created equal.

That's a summer pour? Wow.

Don't worry about the form lock, it is not part of the structural strength, it is to help keep the wall straight

You can see consolidation was minimal if any, but that bottom really looks like snow was sitting in the forms.

I would recommend a structural engineer review just to be safe. A picture says a thousand words, but sometimes things look worse than they really are, someone needs to be onsite to see the project as a whole to evaluate the 'Fix'

engineer proposes removing foam and ties along bottom 16-20" and forming up a corbel and using a highly plastersized mix, and grouting the formlok so it does not rust and cause damage to the wall.

currently costing out to decide to just start fresh or try and salvage

Ask the engineer why he is concerned about the formlock. Ask him what he feels it's purpose is and why he feels the need to repair or salvage it.

The repair will be cheaper then scraping and starting over, but the big question is can you make everything cosmetically pleasing when finished.

Posted By tjetson on 17 Apr 2011 01:13 AM
engineer proposes removing foam and ties along bottom 16-20" and forming up a corbel and using a highly plastersized mix, and grouting the formlok so it does not rust and cause damage to the wall.

currently costing out to decide to just start fresh or try and salvage

  Why remove the exterior foam when you can grout with packers from the inside ?
  
  Do you have better pictures  or  better close-ups of the bottom coursing we can view ?

  This is fixable imho.
 

What do you think tjetson ...should we tear down the bridge and start over...or fix the damn thing ?

eric monkman: He only wants the inside foam removed. not the exterior I wasnt clean enough. Comparing that bridge to a 2800 sqft basement is apples to oranges. It may prove cheaper to remove the basement and start fresh then for the repairs. after you factor in replacing the removed foam with spray foam.

the home owner has a previous thread on the site from 2 years ago when this originally failed. a link to the photo gallery is at www.flickr.com/supernintendo/ you can see how the thing was constructed.

the other deficiencies are: Top brick ledge is at the wrong height. not enough lintel depth over two of the windows.

Everything you have described is repairable, although it will not look very cosmetically pleasing and I think the repair will still be cheaper than ripping it all down and starting over, concrete with foam and plastic attached to it is not clean fill so dumping fees will be expensive.

Foam can be removed and an angle can be installed for the brick ledge, foam can be removed and steel lintels can be bolted and attached for the window headers.

For my own curiosity... why after 2 years is this now just being dealt with?

Looking at the Flickr site at pic # 520, what was inside the form? If not snow since it was a summer pour was it mud/dirt? even without consolidation it would not be consistently in that shape along the whole perimeter base.

chris johnson; The legal system moves like a snail, two years seems to be about the average for a problem like this. The consolidation problems through-out as shown in pic 520 is because the bottom row was a Bridge ledge form and the contractor had their bracing installed over top of the form and pressure treated 2x already installed so there was no vibration at all into the cavity.

if you look at the earlier pics you will see they tried to fake it with stucco parting after they realized what they had done.

You know it's too bad it happened, but I cannot stress enough the value of consolidation, I have photo's that are actually worse than yours of a project that was done in the north US...all due to lack of consolidation.