I am sure this has been answered but I can't get the search to work. What can be done to reduce the thermal bridge of the standard brick ledge. I am planning a full basement. I have thought about angle iron or laying block to the footing but these seem like expensive solution on an already expensive building system. Thanks for all responses.

Hahah...I had the same issues in my mind as you.

We have a full walkout, so on that half of the house we didn't used ICF brickledge, we poured a separate brick ledge up against the outer foam.

On the rest of the house we had to use brick ledge so I put a loop of 1/2 inch pex in the wall at the brickledge.
I may use the pex to take temp measurements and then deside if i want to run coolent through it. We will likely do snow melt so might tie the pex in the brickledge loop at that point. It was like $50 worth of tubing.

I didn't like the fact of the freezing cold brick having a direct heat path to the center of the wall.

Good Luck

Some kind of steel brackets would be much less thermal bridging than solid concrete (both conducting heat from the outside to the center of the ICF wall).

Hi Guys,
I have seen this on one ICF project, not mine though. Seems to address your concerns about thermal bridging, you can spray foam in the anchor after it is installed. All pre-engineered.
Also, the location and level is addressed after your wall is poured, so might help with locating grade afterwards?
My concern is the architectural job required after installation, since your ledge is now protruding - you need a cant strip of sorts to dress it up/fill it in?
Great for commercial applications. Not so sure about residential. Good luck.
Fero Corp. FAST system.
http://www.ferocorp.com/pages/fast/fast.html

Am I to concerned about this bridge? It just seems like a bad idea to build ICF this way.

There just really isn't any other good options if you are building a full basement.

The metal suggestion is very expensive.

My pex option could work if you are willing to pump well water through it to warm it up. But you have the risk of freezing so you might put a heat exchanger and use methanol on the wall side (we will likely do snow melt so we will have that option). I will likely see for one winter how cold that part of the wall gets, before making the jump to turning it on. It was just something that couldn't be installed later so I put the tubing in there. I also outfitted 2 sections of wall that are 12'x20' with pex that I can use as a referance wall.

I might use solar water heat in the house and once the house is warm enought with the solar I was thinking of ways to store the excess heat, so that is another option to run the warm water through the wall and brick ledge once there is excess heat.

Years of tinkering to come.....

newbostonconst - could you please explain the pex approach? What does hot/cold liquid have to do with a brick ledge and thermal bridging??? Very unclear...