Here is our build.

https://goo.gl/photos/ATo7Lc5yrR4EVwCt8

ICF Build Block used for bottom floor and Global Block on top floor with a layer of regular build block around the top.

Floor truss sit on top of wall and next wall poured on top. No ledger board.

Steel framed deck.

Two story precast suspended floor 30x40 foot garages (over/under garage).

Great pics! Looks like this is a well done ICF - I like the hollow core/concrete deck....the tractor lifting that steel frame seems extra safe....haha

Thanks for the pictures. What an awesome house. I always wanted indoor swim lanes. How much did the pool add to the cost? Why did you use Global Block for the upper floor and how did you get them to match with the Build Block? I like the idea of radiant heat, which is what I plan to do. However, I am shying away from burying it in concrete; if something should go wrong years done the road you can't fix it (at least without a lot of expense). Also I am not sure about using concrete for the upper floor? Just wondering why the back garage? All in all a great build and great looking house.

Global block is a product of Build Block. They are interchangeable. Cost of Global Block is cheaper ~20%? Global Block is R30 compare to R21. Global Block uses 1/3 less concrete. The only negative is the drywall attaching points are a lot smaller and not as strong. The top row around the second story is the standard Build Block for the strength to set the roof on attach the drywall good around the top.

Pool didn't have a cost because we did it ourselves during the second pour. Just the cost of the foam and cement. It was a mono pour so that was a little tough.

Concrete is the way to go for heated floors. It make the floor nice and stiff. It adds mass to maintain house temp and protects the tubes. The tubes are rated at 50 years and the only places you normally have problems is at the connections and I never put connections in the concrete. This is my second house doing it this way. It is pressurized during the pour so all is good. Also the labor to lay the tubing is a lot less and you don't need any plates. Concrete and tubing is the only cost besides the Geo Chiller/Water Heater. We have been both Chilling and Heating the floors without any moister/condensation problems. Very excited about that working. There is also a Geo forced air unit for air conditioning that we can also heat with.

ICFBdr, I moved a 2 car garage once with that backhoe the same way, drove the backhoe into the garage and lifted. Then drove to the new location with the garage on top of the backhoe. Worked great.

My other house has a 60x40 garage and there is no place to hide anything. Crap is everywhere (bikes, four wheelers, lawn stuff). So this house has the same size garage just in 2 locations. The upper garage will be supper nice and the bottom garage will have all the crap. Cost to do it was cheap, the wall cost and ~$13,000 for the precast panels. You can't get a 30x40 garage for ~$20,000 that is that nice and insulated any other way.

Thanks

Dumb question.
How are you insulating the walls of the truss bays above the ICF?

Addendum: And AWESOME place by the way!

Thanks, This project has been over whelming. But is turning out nice.

The roof angles on this house have been a real challenge. The 45 degree angles have a great effect but are also labor intensive. I found one of the four places I had quote the trusses would do the intersecting cathedral ceilings. The others would only do a flat ceiling. The truss supplier warned us we would have to do some fill in to make it work and we did.

That being said the drywall (which we are quoting now) is going to be difficult also. So I plan on once the drywall is up to spray foam the ceiling. We plan on foaming directly on the back of the drywall and to the trusses. We are so over budget that I can't afford to do full spray foam so it will only be a inch or two. That will vapor/air seal the house and give extra support to the drywall. Then we will do blown in fiberglass to minimize the weight on the ceiling to meet code and plan to come back next year with cellulose to bring it to R60. The trusses are energy heal trusses and I put in plywood scraps up so we can insulate on top of the whole wall without the insulation falling into the soffits. We are planning on spray foaming all the gable ends.

The house has 24 corners and 24 walls.

I can't get the web site to come up.

Posted By newbostonconst on 12 Aug 2017 01:20 PM
Thanks, This project has been over whelming. But is turning out nice.

The roof angles on this house have been a real challenge. The 45 degree angles have a great effect but are also labor intensive. I found one of the four places I had quote the trusses would do the intersecting cathedral ceilings. The others would only do a flat ceiling. The truss supplier warned us we would have to do some fill in to make it work and we did.

That being said the drywall (which we are quoting now) is going to be difficult also. So I plan on once the drywall is up to spray foam the ceiling. We plan on foaming directly on the back of the drywall and to the trusses. We are so over budget that I can't afford to do full spray foam so it will only be a inch or two. That will vapor/air seal the house and give extra support to the drywall. Then we will do blown in fiberglass to minimize the weight on the ceiling to meet code and plan to come back next year with cellulose to bring it to R60. The trusses are energy heal trusses and I put in plywood scraps up so we can insulate on top of the whole wall without the insulation falling into the soffits. We are planning on spray foaming all the gable ends.

The house has 24 corners and 24 walls.

I watched a video about a week back (not sure of the date of the video) where the family had to move out of their home after having it spray foamed. They had to tear out a portion of the roof. I think it eventually was determined that the company or workers did not do it correctly. Just a thought.

Posted By newbostonconst on 12 Aug 2017 10:15 AM
Global block is a product of Build Block. They are interchangeable. Cost of Global Block is cheaper ~20%? Global Block is R30 compare to R21. Global Block uses 1/3 less concrete. The only negative is the drywall attaching points are a lot smaller and not as strong. The top row around the second story is the standard Build Block for the strength to set the roof on attach the drywall good around the top.

Pool didn't have a cost because we did it ourselves during the second pour. Just the cost of the foam and cement. It was a mono pour so that was a little tough.

Concrete is the way to go for heated floors. It make the floor nice and stiff. It adds mass to maintain house temp and protects the tubes. The tubes are rated at 50 years and the only places you normally have problems is at the connections and I never put connections in the concrete. This is my second house doing it this way. It is pressurized during the pour so all is good. Also the labor to lay the tubing is a lot less and you don't need any plates. Concrete and tubing is the only cost besides the Geo Chiller/Water Heater. We have been both Chilling and Heating the floors without any moister/condensation problems. Very excited about that working. There is also a Geo forced air unit for air conditioning that we can also heat with.

ICFBdr, I moved a 2 car garage once with that backhoe the same way, drove the backhoe into the garage and lifted. Then drove to the new location with the garage on top of the backhoe. Worked great.

My other house has a 60x40 garage and there is no place to hide anything. Crap is everywhere (bikes, four wheelers, lawn stuff). So this house has the same size garage just in 2 locations. The upper garage will be supper nice and the bottom garage will have all the crap. Cost to do it was cheap, the wall cost and ~$13,000 for the precast panels. You can't get a 30x40 garage for ~$20,000 that is that nice and insulated any other way.

Thanks

Ahh, I remember looking at Globalblock but did not like the large area of insulation between the sides; just seemed to be weaker to me (less concrete). I see though you can get optional web attachments for them. Are the tubes actually guaranteed for 50 years? The points you make about the extra work involved in wood floors makes it more appealing to go with concrete but I would still like to see the guarantee. What company makes the tubes?

Posted By newbostonconst on 12 Aug 2017 10:15 AM
Global block is a product of Build Block. They are interchangeable. Cost of Global Block is cheaper ~20%? Global Block is R30 compare to R21. Global Block uses 1/3 less concrete. The only negative is the drywall attaching points are a lot smaller and not as strong. The top row around the second story is the standard Build Block for the strength to set the roof on attach the drywall good around the top.

Pool didn't have a cost because we did it ourselves during the second pour. Just the cost of the foam and cement. It was a mono pour so that was a little tough.

Concrete is the way to go for heated floors. It make the floor nice and stiff. It adds mass to maintain house temp and protects the tubes. The tubes are rated at 50 years and the only places you normally have problems is at the connections and I never put connections in the concrete. This is my second house doing it this way. It is pressurized during the pour so all is good. Also the labor to lay the tubing is a lot less and you don't need any plates. Concrete and tubing is the only cost besides the Geo Chiller/Water Heater. We have been both Chilling and Heating the floors without any moister/condensation problems. Very excited about that working. There is also a Geo forced air unit for air conditioning that we can also heat with.

ICFBdr, I moved a 2 car garage once with that backhoe the same way, drove the backhoe into the garage and lifted. Then drove to the new location with the garage on top of the backhoe. Worked great.

My other house has a 60x40 garage and there is no place to hide anything. Crap is everywhere (bikes, four wheelers, lawn stuff). So this house has the same size garage just in 2 locations. The upper garage will be supper nice and the bottom garage will have all the crap. Cost to do it was cheap, the wall cost and ~$13,000 for the precast panels. You can't get a 30x40 garage for ~$20,000 that is that nice and insulated any other way.

Thanks

Ahh, I remember looking at Globalblock but did not like the large area of insulation between the sides; just seemed to be weaker to me (less concrete). I see though you can get optional web attachments for them. Are the tubes actually guaranteed for 50 years? The points you make about the extra work involved in wood floors makes it more appealing to go with concrete but I would still like to see the guarantee. What company makes the tubes?

OK......I finally got it to come up with something I've 'never' used before. Hell....I think a 10yo is up more in tech than I am! It's getting ridiculous on how fast it changes.......  Looks good!!!!

All codes now except Global Block. Some installers don't like it but we did it fine. Concrete is extremely strong. My head building inspector kept asking where my shear walls were....shear walls are walls in a stick house that stop the wall from falling diagonally. I kept telling him shear wall don't apply. I finally found a study of them pulling on a section of wall and measuring the force. I gave him the values of them doing it on a full stick wall and a concrete wall with a garage door opening in it and the concrete wall even with the garage opening was still 10 times stronger. I never heard back from him after that.

I have seen that video of spray foam gone wrong. I am guessing it was put together by the fiberglass people. I am only doing an inch or so thick. The problem they had was when it was put in really thick.

According to Uponor, PEX leaks are not a concern when the system is properly installed. Their PEX tubing has a life expectancy of more than 100 years, and all the tubing is thoroughly inspected before it leaves the manufacturing plant.

I don't see any reason why PEX embedded in concrete wouldn't last two or three times longer provided no one drills through the slab and PEX. However, the real benefit of having a concrete HR emitter is maximum efficiency and performance. Typically for a concrete HR emitter, only a mid 80s F supply temp is required to generate the required floor surface temp to generate the required room heat gain. Typically for an under-floor HR emitter, a supply temp in excess of 100 F is required to generate the required floor surface temp to generate the required room heat gain. In addition to this lower supply temp improving efficiency and performance, lower supply temp cycles are also less stressful on the PEX and will further increase life expectancy.

For this reason, we always recommend mini-splits in lieu of under-floor HR. If you are pouring slab floors, HR makes great sense for heating system comfort and acquisition/operational economics.

This is a great build. I finished my DIY (non-ICF) build about 9 months ago. Your's looks about 10x more complicated so good luck, lol. We have in-slab radiant on all floors and it is awesome. Keep the pictures coming!