Four corner house with attached garage 89' X 35'. 10Ft ceilings. 2830 sq of ICF walls counting the 558 sq of doors and windows. I'm just trying to figure out if the ICFs will cost 25K or 60K. Attached sketch if my description was confusing

Icf's alone should be $3 to $4 per sq ft depending on the type and delivery. With waste $9000 to $12000

what part of the country are you building in? are you looking for a turnkey price, labor or just material price? i was not able to read the dimensions on the attachment. for an accurate estimate i would need the elevations or height of the walls as well.

Yep, couple of variables like location? are you doing any of the work or contracting it?

My Concrete contractor once mentioned a figure of around $10 per S/F for a poured wall ready to finish, for a DIY wall with owner/builder assembling the wall and rebar and a contractor filling it. So far in our build we are a little under that number, with the thicker basement portion of the wall poured. Once the walls share of the engineering/special inspections is factored in it should be very close to that 10SF number. We are however in a seismic area so the wall is pretty heavy with rebar and would cost a little less in a non seismic area of the country.

With your dimensions 89 X 35 I come up with 248 LF of wall X 10' tall that's 2480 SF of wall. Minus your 558 SF of openings(did that include the garage door?) = 1922 SF of ICF wall? That number X $10 is $19,220 for a wall assembled by you, filled by contractor and ready for finish(siding, windows and drywall).

If you are contracting, it may be closer to $15 per SF or closer to $28,830...

Thank you for the responses. I'm in the Phoenix area. I am planning on contracting the job. My square footage number also included the interior wall between the garage and home as ICF. The 558 sq ft of windows and doors did include the garage doors.

I would like a turnkey price. If $15 a sq ft is pretty standard I can work with that.

Posted By gracilism on 10 May 2016 11:12 AM
Thank you for the responses. I'm in the Phoenix area. I am planning on contracting the job. My square footage number also included the interior wall between the garage and home as ICF. The 558 sq ft of windows and doors did include the garage doors.

I would like a turnkey price. If $15 a sq ft is pretty standard I can work with that.

Generally speaking, $13-$15 per wall square foot is about the average costs

Gracilism, we are almost done with our ICF home in the Phoenix area. We are Owner Builders and it took us now 2 years to build plus one year of planning and permits before that. We are always willing to share our experience and knowledge from an Owner Builder perspective, if you like to know or learn more. Send me a PM with your email, if you like.

Why not post the pricing / costs, etc. so everyone can benefit from your experience instead of just one person? Thanks.

Hi mojoe,
I believe your last post was directed to me? I am not checking the forum as much as I did before due to the time I simply don't have any more. The building process is eating up any time left in our life. We are not just Owner Builders or Own General Contractors, we are physically doing lots of work ourselves. Did we build a house before? No! I didn't even know how a house is built before I started watching YouTube videos. How did we learn to do things? We had to for different reasons....: We couldn't always afford to hire contractors - the construction business in our area started to boom from nowhere when we started and prices for labor and material went up about 30% to 50% - our set budget wasn't realistic any more. Also, it didn't matter whether we hired licensed or non-licensed contractors... very often in both cases the results were so disappointing and in order to have things right we had to go back and correct their mistakes and sloppy work. When we did something ourselves and messed up, at least WE messed up.

I will give you some numbers here, I have no problems doing that. Let me tell you first, why I think that numbers here don't mean too much for you or others who try to figure out their budgets. I learned that from our own experience. The reason why I wrote Gracilism is because he is going to build in the same area. And still, the fees can vary from City to City even within the Phoenix area and make a big difference. I also don't want to shock people in this forum with my numbers because the permit fees turned out to be extremely high ($33K). This included the Grading and drainage and the Building permit/fire sprinkler permit/retainer wall permit.
There are so many factors that affect the cost of building - I truly could write a book about the headaches and some highlights of building a home. Although we did lots of planning and research before, we learned that so many things can throw you off the budget.
Now... we are building within an HOA community, this makes it even more difficult and costly. We were not allowed to just build a simple rectangular home. Although we dedicated the last 3 years of our lives to building our dream home, working about 7 days a week for about 12 to 16 hours every day, we still exceeded our budget for at least $250K if not more (we are not finished yet). We sacrificed for now our pool and solar system too but one thing we didn't want to sacrifice, and that's QUALITY in the house that can not easily be done later. OK, I think now it's time to throw some numbers at you - OUR numbers:

Permit fees: $33K (City related)
Soft fees: $32K (Architect, Engineers, Blue Prints, etc.)
Other fees: $13K (Trash, HOA, mobile toilets, etc.)
Labor: $250K (estimated numbers as often bills are not separated in labor/material)
Material: $360K
Taxes: $2.5K
Tools: $5K
Home Equipment: $63K (includes Ikea kitchen cabinets, Ikea Bathroom cabinets for 3 bathrooms, fixtures, security system etc.)
Other costs: $75K (includes the purchase cost for land)

ICF/wall costs are included in these figures. The complete ICF job itself did cost us appr. $100K finished by a contractor, including ICF stem walls. I don't know how many sqft ICF walls there were tough, It was quite a lot because the walls between garage and home are also ICF.

The home has appr. 5000 sq ft livable space, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms (only 3 are finished so far) 2000 sqft garage/workshop, Storage room (not ICF), patios and covered view deck, a total of 8000 sqft under roof. Main open livable space has 16 ft high walls, Master Bedroom and Office have 12 ft, remaining rooms are 10 ft. Around 2500 sq ft driveway/pavers, 200 ft retainer wall.

Extras: European 3 panel windows with aluminum clad, same aluminum folding doors and sliding doors and exterior doors, Radiant Floor Heating, Spray foam Insulation, Uponor Fire Sprinkler system, Sto Lotusan Synthetic Stucco. We didn't regret to spend money on these extra features and because we did a lot of the work ourselves it wasn't super expensive.... except of the Uponor fire sprinkler system which is great - but our original plumber bailed on the job and this caused us about $10K unexpected and unnecessary costs. We also misestimated the Stucco job which was material and labor about $50K. But it looks awesome and hopefully we don't have to paint for many years.

Many future projects are still on the list....

@mojoe: Was sharing these information what you hoped to get?

Thank you for relating your experience. While my home will be much smaller your cost overruns are concerning. Especially the permitting process. Luckily I will be outside the city and will only have to deal with Maricopa County, but I may underestimated that cost. But more concerning is the shoddy work you had to endure while using "professionals". I know I would not find that acceptable either.

Rafi, Thanks, I was most interested in the ICF and related numbers but I appreciate all the information. I wish more people would share their costs and experiences. Obvioiusly, location and circumstances will vary and therefore so will the numbers but any numbers are better than no numbers. Trying to get pricing on ICF's is like trying to get the nuclear launch codes. That sounds like quite a project for a non-builder. I admire your confidence and sense of adventure. I can verify your experiences with hiring "pro's". It seems there are painfully few who take enough pride in their work these days or they hire people who either can't or don't do the job right the first time. They are never late with a bill, though. I know there are many who do good work for a fair price so save the self-righteous rebuttals from those who think they need to advertise. Everyone's work speaks for itself.

One thing to note is that most trades do not like working with owners/builders. So they typically charge more than they would working for a well-known and experienced GC. So there is that conflict and issue to deal with. Being a owner/builder is not for the faint of heart. It's a challenge and a difficult one.

Pricing ICF's is dependent on location, complexity of the project and local pricing on concrete and trades. It's no different than frame house building. Two identical homes in two different locations can cost up to 100% more or less than the other location. Frame house building pricing is all over the place. It's not that ICF pricing is somehow "secret". Getting quotes from reputable ICF installers is common.

All construction pricing is subject to the same variables like location, etc. - yet it is easy to get pricing and construction details for conventional construction whether owner/builder or not. That is definitely not the case with ICF as many have already attested to and hence the name of this thread for one.

Posted By mojoe on 14 May 2016 09:30 AM
All construction pricing is subject to the same variables like location, etc. - yet it is easy to get pricing and construction details for conventional construction whether owner/builder or not. That is definitely not the case with ICF as many have already attested to and hence the name of this thread for one.

"Many have already attested to"? Only a few people responded to this thread and those that did all gave pricing for ICF. The pricing all came in around $13-$15 per wall square footage for a ready OTD price.

I think you are making something out of nothing. Conventional pricing is nowhere near "easy" as the numbers are all over the place (2x4 vs 2x6, 16 vs 24 on center, cellulose insulation, spray foam, headers, glu-lam beams,  etc). You can have 2 identical homes in the same location and 2 different builders will give pricing all over the place. It is nowhere near "easy". Ask any owner/builder and see what the trades bid at. Three plumbers will come up with 3 different bids for the same job. The same with electricians, roofers, etc.

ICF pricing is straightforward. You have a form, rebar and concrete. Pricing is around $13-$15 OTD.

Lbear, Either your reading comprehension is poor or you are deliberately misinterpreting my post to suit your own ends. Instead of trying to discourage people, why don't you just try to assist them - or remain silent.

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