Hey everyone, I know that generally ICF homes are more expensive (upfront) than traditional wood homes - to construct. But I'd like to capture and convey how ICF is ultimately cheaper than traditional housing because of the various benefits of ICF which save the homeowner money annually for decades (i.e. lower utilities, fewer HVAC issues (since it will not have to work as hard), lower insurance premiums, little to no foundation/structural issues, etc.). In order to do this, I am trying to find a document, etc. that (1) lists out all of the operational and maintenance items that are reduced (in terms of cost and/or labor) by the benefits associated with ICF homes; (2) provides an average cost for each item in a standard ICF home; (3) provides an average cost for each item in a standard traditional-wood home; and, if possible, compares these costs in order to show the ICF cost savings. I am hoping something like this exists already, even if it only partially aligns with what I've described above. This save me the time and effort of trying to create this from scratch... Essentially, I am trying to quantify in dollars the ongoing (i.e. annual) benefits an ICF home provides a homeowner over the lifecycle of the home in order to show that, in the end, an ICF home is more affordable than traditional housing. Any insight or direction you all might be able to provide as to where I could find something like this that's already created or other useful information along these lines so that I can try creating it myself would be really helpful! Thanks! BC

Good luck with that...

ICF construction prices vary widely depending on locality. ICF always could be and still can be accomplished for much lower cost than traditional wood if done DIY. But if hired out, I have heard about bids being as high as 2 or 3 times the cost of traditional wood.

Personally, I can't imagine anyone wanting to live long term in a hollow wall traditional wood building these days, period. Sure, in a diurnal temp climate, ICF has a thermal mass effect that can create an effective R-value higher than its conventional R-value that can significantly reduce HVAC operational cost. It costs us about $30/month to heat about 4000 sf in balmy southern OR using a cheap electric boiler (COP=1, 9 cents/kWh) for hydronic radiant floor heating. We cut that in half when we also use our masonry heater. And we could even divide this small monthly cost by 3 if we used an air to water heat pump system for which the ROI would far exceed our lifetime. We have an ICF performance calculator on our website to precisely determine ICF effective R-value. We were only able to obtain fire insurance in our remote area BECAUSE we used ICF, concrete board exterior siding and metal standing seam roof.

Whatever data you manage to develop, I suspect it will only be applicable to that one locality for which it was developed...and it will only be applicable for a short period of time given how costs vary quickly with time.