Guys, I am amazed at the options when it comes to building a concrete home. I am in south Louisiana and it seems that ICF is very limited here. I am set on building my home myself and I want concrete walls. Ive looked at Liteblok, Vobbblock and Apex. Due to availability and apparent ease of use I think I want to use Apex blocks. In doing a search, I see very little information about it. Please let me know if any of you have first-hand experience with them and any negatives that I may not see. Thanks!

A friend of mine just built a little house with them. They are similar to the Rastra blocks. In my opinion they are good if you have more time than money. Less concrete than a flat panel system but more labor involved. Also I think they lend themselves to plaster/stucco finishes.

Thanks, Bollermann. I definitely have more time than money. I started to find some negatives about Rastra and I don't think they are available here. The Apex's are available through Lowes. I will be using Hardi plank on the exterior.

billybob -- if you're buying them at Lowes your probably paying more than they're worth. I think Lowes is great but they will command a pretty good markup. What are they asking per square foot?

Texas, I wasn't sure how to compare it just yet but I just got the price today and thought it was high. Its $36 per block which is 4' x 16 inches so Im figuring $7 per sq. ft. Im hoping to find another distributor but not sure if its possible. What is a normal sq. footage price ? Thanks

Posted By billybob on 11 Jul 2012 09:04 PM
Guys, I am amazed at the options when it comes to building a concrete home. I am in south Louisiana and it seems that ICF is very limited here. I am set on building my home myself and I want concrete walls. Ive looked at Liteblok, Vobbblock and Apex. Due to availability and apparent ease of use I think I want to use Apex blocks. In doing a search, I see very little information about it. Please let me know if any of you have first-hand experience with them and any negatives that I may not see. Thanks!

BuildBlock has a distributor in Baton Rouge. I used their blocks and liked them, except for some dimension problems.

I paid <$2.50/sq ft for Liteform. I stacked and poured 192 linear ft of basement walls last year and just recently finished stacking and pouring my main floor walls. This was my first experience with ICF. Liteform is DIY friendly.

Nudura comes from Georgia. I've sold into western Louisiana recently for about 3 dollars less per square foot delivered. Apex may be high compared to ICF because it is more of a hybrid. Not that it's not ICF but it's more of a "block" than a concrete form. Regards.

I am very new at this but Im assuming the foam "sandwich" type ICF will use more on-site concrete than the "brick" type which increases the sq. ft. cost a little but my main concern is having the foam on the outside. I have left blocks of foam in my yard and had all types of creatures, ants, termites, spiders, etc. all living in it. Im not sure what keeps them tunneling in from under the siding and infesting the house. I appreciate any feedback. Thanks

Pick up your yard a bit Billybob
What are your goals? Strength, Sound Transmission, Fire, Energy Etc.

Posted By billybob on 12 Jul 2012 12:14 AM
I am very new at this but Im assuming the foam "sandwich" type ICF will use more on-site concrete than the "brick" type which increases the sq. ft. cost a little but my main concern is having the foam on the outside. I have left blocks of foam in my yard and had all types of creatures, ants, termites, spiders, etc. all living in it. Im not sure what keeps them tunneling in from under the siding and infesting the house. I appreciate any feedback. Thanks

There are millions of homes that utilize EPS foam on the exterior. Whether the home is built out of wood framing or concrete, EPS foam on the exterior is very common, as it is a common exterior insualtion. The exterior EPS foam is always covered with either stucco, siding or veneer stone. If you detail the exterior, you will not have issues with critters tunneling in. The EPS provides no nutritional value to termites or other insects and if your wall cavity is concrete, they can't go anywhere.

With an ICF wall, even if they tunneled into the EPS, where are they going to go? There is 6" or reinforced concrete stopping them from coming inside of the home.

Being that you are out in Louisiana, another option for you might be SCIPs, they are more common in that area. It still has EPS but it is sandwiched between concrete.

I really appreciate all this input. While I was picking up my yard I was recalling the several incidences that Ive worked on houses where I found ants or termites behind vinyl siding living in the foam insulation. I know they don't eat it but dig through it. I guess in envision termites being able to tunnel up to the attic space. My concern may not be warranted but that is one of them. My priorities in order are Strength from Hurricanes and Tornadoes, then Energy efficiency, then sound and I want to build it myself. Lbear, I just did a search on the "scip" which I haven't heard of before, I guess its just a strong SIP. The little I saw didn't seem very DIY with the cranes and shotcrete. I am a formal pool builder and it is hard to find good shotcrete guys here also. I am going to open myself up to the idea of the foam sandwich" idea again and talk with the build a block guy in Baton Rouge, which appears to be a flooring company??. I guess Im a little disappointed that no one seems to have experience with the Apex block. It looks like a great idea for me to build by myself and seems pretty forgiving. I do worry about blowouts and consolidation on the other type systems so this seemed perfect. Keep the info coming! Thanks!!

$7/ft? Ouch. I paid a bit less than $2 for autoclaved aerated concrete from Aercon near Orlando, Fla, and a third of that shipping to Pa (www. aerconaac.com) AAC is portland cement that's puffed up like a marshmallow and baked in a steam oven (autoclave). It's a major building system in almost every part of the world except for here. Been around in Europe since the '20s. It comes in various densities; the most common, at about a fifth the weight of regular cement, insulates at about R1.25 per inch. You'd need 10 inch blocks and a building inspector who accepts mass-enhanced R values to pass code if La requires R19 walls. http://extension.ucdavis.edu/unit/green_building_and_sustainability/pdf/resources/auto_aerated_concrete.pdf In my book, the principle advantage of AAC (and Apex and Rastra) is its pliability in design. If you can think it up, you can build it. This is my house http://www.flickr.com/photos/58061641@N06/

Two bits of advice: Dry stacking systems like Apex and AAC are not as idiot proof as you think. If you don't get an almost perfect start, a minor problem can turn into a major one four courses later. I hired a moonlighting mason to help me and he was worth every penny. I got the walls up in two months and paid $7/ft all in.

Traditional stucco is super easy over Apex or AAC. I paid $4.50/ft. Hardie panel will limit your design and isn't going to save a lot of money.

FWIW, traditional ICF is a better energy choice in La. Thermal mass is no help with humidity. With no hvac last summer, my house topped out at 83, bjut with a dew point at 70+, that is still plenty uncomfortable. I installed a 2 ton mini split, this year that would run less in an ICF house, although payback likely would be decades rather than years. For the rest of it, sound, comfort, safety, it doesn't really matter how you go concrete in my opinion. In the end, I decided that traditional ICF is not DIYable, and blocks are.

Good luck to you. Its lots of work but a great feeling at the end of the day to step back and think, man, is that nice, and I did it.

My bad. make that a little less than $3/sf for the block alone. That would be 09 prices. Dunno what you'd pay today, but $7 is highly unlikely.

Thanks Todd, just checked out the Aercon site. It appears that I need a crane and several people that know what they are doing. It also uses a mortar joint which is the weak point. Im surprised its not even anchored to the slab in the video I watched. It is interesting but doesn't really appear to be DIY. I am definitely using hardiplank and no stucco. The house plans are for a 2 story country home. I am going to call Apex today to see if buying direct will save me some money. If their price is so high I don't know how anyone is using them. From the look of this board it doesn't look like they have any customers!! Thanks

No crane necessary.AAC comes in 8x24x8/10/12 inch blocks, in addition to the giant blocks you saw in the video. The 8x8x24s weigh 30 pounds or roughly the same as a cmu block. They use the same rebar attachment to foundations as do ICF and CMU. In fact, AAC is pretty much cmu construction with solid blocks. The block is the weakest point, and will break adjacent to the thinset. No worries. With three inch vertical cores every four feet and bond beams at floor heights, AAC is plenty sturdy. If you'd read the UC Davis pdf I linked you'd discover that the 5000 AAC houses in Kobe Japan survived the 1995 earthquake largely undamaged.

Anyhoo, Apex's quote to ship to pa was outrageous. The limitation on composite ICFs, as Apex and Rastra are called, is shipping. Most of the manufacturers are in the southwest where thermal mass matters a great deal. Aercon and Cresco in Houston are the closest to you.

My warning about drystack being harder than it seems applies to apex as well. Dunno what tolerance they promise, but a sixteenth of an inch is pretty tight for cast blocks. That said, a sixteenth inch hiccup can turn into a quarter inch problem in four courses. There is a reason cmu blocks are set in 3/8 inch of mortar.

AAC is a pain to cut. When using Rastra (back in the day) we would shim each course plumb and foam the seams.

You mentioned Cresco. It appeared to me that Apex would be easier due to it being larger. I don't see a lot said about Liteblok. They are close enough for me to pick up myself which would save shipping. Does anyone have experience with it?

Sorry. Houston was too far away too. I am sure you can find builders in Tx who use it. It wouldn't hurt if you offered to schlep blocks for the fellow just to spend a few days looking over his shoulder. I wouldn't worry about small blocks vs large blocks. It is the same amount of concrete in the end, only softer grunts with the littler blocks. By the end of the day, there is no such thing as lightweight concrete

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Posted By billybob on 12 Jul 2012 09:59 AM 
. . .  Im surprised its not even anchored to the slab in the video I watched.   . . .

AAC blocks can be tied to the foundation with threaded rods.  Rods run vertically from the top plate or bond beam to the foundation.