Posted By ll1542 on 06 Oct 2011 08:18 PM
We are doing a two story colonial, more down than up I dont have a real accurate breakdown. But master on the main and three rooms up for the kids. so that is 3000 total then we also want a full unfinished basement. Hope this sheds a little light on what we are trying to do. I would like to do ICF all the way but everyone I speak to says "oh way to expensive" you can get the same results if you build right blah blah. Problem is trying to find anyone who wants to build beyond a 2x4 construction. So I found this guy who is doing passive home but I am just thinking that for the same money I probably could do ICF and a high R roof also. So any info on what I am into would really help me focus my efforts. Thanks

Needless to say, 2 x 4 exterior framing is pretty much passe'. Do you plan to be in this home for many, many, years? If not, you may want to rethink about building anything in this climate. Construction costs today exceed market value. Here in Idaho the past couple of years the only homes being built were for those for whom money was not an issue, weren't overly concerned about mortgages, and planned to be in the home for years. That business has now even dried up. The spec home business has been totally dead for over 2 years.

I built my 2000 sf one story home in SW Idaho in 2008 & early 2009. It cost me about $150/sf for one floor over a concrete crawl space. It's built handicap accessible with 4' halls, large bathroooms, curbless showers, and no steps anywhere. I installed a Daikin air-to-air heat pump. I insulated the underside of the roof deck with about 10" of Sealection 500 foam. This includes the garage, but lesser thickness. The garage is 28 x 32. One third of the floor is tile and two thirds engineered hardwood, all of it over joists and Advantech subfloor. I used ceramic tiles for countertops. The home is solid and short of frilly details. I and one hired hand worked on it full time for 13 months. I contracted the concrete and roof (bought the trusses myself), and my builder partner had two of his guys hang the siding.  When I converted the construction loan to a mortgage in April 2009 the appraiser lowered the market value from $310,000 based on the plans to $215,000, a 30% drop because of the market crash. Spec house construction stopped because contractors cannot build a home for what it will sell for.

If you are looking at a relatively short term, say less than 10 years, occupancy you may want to just buy a conventional home that's on the market, even if you have to invest in some energy improvements. I know it's heresy to say so in this forum, but you just may be able to pay for lesser energy efficiency with the lower mortgage for a current market house.

Yes I totally understand what you are saying. We own a piece of land that we want to build on and probably will stay there for the next 20+ years and hopefully just pass it down to one of our children if they decide to live in the area after that. I have always wondered how these builders do it. We have a guy not to far from us who is building energy star homes and selling them for about $125 a sq ft. That is why I am so perplexed by some of the numbers I hear these builders throw out.
we own our land and then on top of it $150 a sq ft seems steep to me. I understand on here we are talking about a whole new ball game in construction. But on a 3000 sq ft home and extra $25 a sq ft. is $75000 no matter how you slice you would have to save a lot of energy to ever come close to making that money back.

ll1542, I sent you a message offline including contact data for ICF builder/installer local to you. Please contact them for realistic ICF pricing. If you go to a stick builder and ask him to build something outside his comfort zone, he will charge you for his expected learning time and screw-ups. Best to find someone who already knows the ropes.

you would have to save a lot of energy to ever come close to making that money back.

It's hard to buy a quality product and make out like a bandit at the same time. If you want to enjoy the benefits of an ICF home, you need to go and build one because there just aren't any to buy.

Same thing for "green" houses, whatever your definition of that is. People build them to live in them, not to sell.

If you want to buy an off-the shelf home and add some features to make it more energy efficient, now, that is do-able. Particularly now, with a glut of homes on the market. I wouldn't be surprised if the ones people let go of first were large energy hogs. You probably won't find any ICF homes or passivehaus homes, though.

and no steps anywhere.

Did you find that part of it hard? I just built a home in which I wanted no steps on the main floor and found it curiously difficult to do. Apparently, many of the tradesmen hadn't seen much of that and they were always wanting to create different levels. In the end, all it really took is a bit of planning, but the resistance along the way was surprising.

Posted By ICFHybrid on 11 Oct 2011 01:41 AM

and no steps anywhere.

Did you find that part of it hard? I just built a home in which I wanted no steps on the main floor and found it curiously difficult to do. Apparently, many of the tradesmen hadn't seen much of that and they were always wanting to create different levels. In the end, all it really took is a bit of planning, but the resistance along the way was surprising.

Not at all. I was my own designer, draftsman, GC, and primary tradesman/laborer! I met with surprisingly little resistance or skepticism, even about having the garage floor, front porch slab, and patio all only 1" below the interior floor level. The only thing about designing it wheel chair and walker friendly is my nice large master bathroom ended up being larger than I would have liked, but it's what I could get to fit into the overall floor plan. The most complicated part of the floor design was providing for a sunken floor underneath the showers so I could make them curbless.

Sorry for the late reply. Just had twins so not a lot of time for playing online.

Happy to share any additional details:

- No, that didn't include the property. I bought 5 acres a few years back and sat on it.
- Gas furnace, 70K BTU max with variable speed fan, 3 zones, 16 SEER AC
- We have 9' ceilings in the whole house. The basement is slightly taller to give us 9' finished
- We did better than builder grade inside. Plaster instead of drywall, fatter trim, some crown, nicer doors, tiled showers, etc. One of these days I'll post some pix.

Galnar, I'd be interested to hear about the plaster system you used and how the process worked out from an application and cost standpoint.

We did it the 'new' old fashioned way with blue board on all the walls instead of trying something like Plastermax. My plasterer was open to trying it but we couldn't find anyone reselling it locally. I paid about $7,000 for the sheet rock and installation for 276 sheets. The plaster was $40/sheet installed so the whole job was about $18,000. I'm very satisfied with how it turned out and my walls are much more kid-proof than the drywall in my old house.

I would skip the basement and footings and use a frost protected shallow foundation with a monolithic, thickened edge slab. If the lot isn't flat, then you will need to use concrete or ICF for at least some of the walls.

ICF blocks I've seen are $3.50+/sq ft before labor and concrete. Much more than using foam panels of the same thickness.

I've been building with ICF for 12 years now out west. I agree with a lot of the post as far as going with a full ICF basement. The one thing I would caution you about is there should be no contractor that will give you an estimate of your cost of construction without looking at the engineered set of plans. Engineering can have a big affect on the cost of construction. I can tell you that here in the west earthquake code brings most 9 - 10 foot tall walls to around $15 / sq. ft. if you have retaining. My recommendation is to get your engineering set of plans done and then get bids. If someone is trying to talk you out of building with ICF, they don't know what they're doing. My last words of wisdom are brace, brace, and brace some more. If you want a good product, spend the extra time bracing.