Hallways are not wide enough to count as bedrooms. As far as egress windows go, where I live the AHJ would just make you add egress windows to the plans, before they stamped them. Cheers, Eric

Hoosier,

Eric is right, if the LAHJ thinks you are trying to pull a fast one, he will just make you put in larger windows or sign a release saying they will not be used for sleeping rooms. Use this as a helpful guide and don't try to split hairs. It will only cause you frustration and create problems with the LAHJ. they do this all day long and can smell a rat. You will want them on your side once you break ground or you will never get your CO. Best to be open and honest. Once you have the CO in hand, then you can divide things up as you please.

It might help to find out what taxes typically run where you are thinking of building. They vary widely all over the US. Our taxes here in SC are less than $1000 a year. The house we sold in FL was about $4500. My brother's house in VT is $16,000 a year. All of these are normal, typical houses. Another possible big cost is permits. Again, here in SC our permit was $400. I have a friend in CT who paid $66,000 in permits and fees to build on partial wetlands. My brother's taxes would be a deal-breaker for us, as would the outrageous permit cost in CT. I have no idea what to expect in IN, and it could vary widely by county, town, or even neighborhood. We are outside of the city limits here, and the surrounding properties are fairly poor. Our house is a basic ranch from the outside, and they are not yet sophisticated enough around here to consider high end building materials in the appraisal, especially things they can't see, such as ICF.

One thing we might look into is getting our zoning changed to agricultural. We have enough land; it's just a matter of whether we can meet the other requirements. Taxes on property zoned agricultural are much lower than residential.

You really need to find out the zoning requirements for the area in which you plan to build before you waste time designing. Some areas referred to as "farmland" don't have any building requirements at all, while others can be very restrictive. Many municipalities have these requirements published online.

Where I live the number of bedrooms has no impact on the tax. The tax you pay is derived from whatever the private property appraiser says your house is worth.

@ Jelly,
It's no waste of time. It's fun! Really if I had all information there is to get then still I'm not sure what I want. Designing and talking to you guys have taught me a lot!
As an example yesterday I took all the advise about the number of bedrooms, some rooms being overly large, hallways being a waste of space and heating a house with just one mini-split. I'm not done yet but without really compromising my wishes, the house has become more open for internal heat flow. I saved almost a bedroom worth on hallway area. And on top of that I have to walk less to get to a certain room. That's very satisfying for me Jelly. I hope to waste may more hours with such success :-)
(Just teasing a bit. Your input is very welcome. Likewise that of anyone who participated in this thread)


But obviously it's no more that common logic that I need to get all the info when I get in the final planning phase. I'm far from that as you surely have noticed when you read my posts. One post I talk about a flat roof, the next about a pitched roof, Number of bedrooms changes per post. From brick to concrete to ICF etc. The interior walls aren't decided upon. Besides of that the drawing are very quick and easy.

I'll try figure out taxes in the area. I have lotsa trouble contacting my friends lately. They have internet issues. Bad internet is a serious deal breaker for me. More on-topic is that they got hit by a tornado which knocked out a power line, fence down, tree rooted. Obviously out of their control but still... Few shingles blown off (at the neighbor's house, not sure about that). I'm aware nothing can withstand mother nature when she gets really angry, but I want to add fairly tornado proof in in the mix. That brings me back to my brick concrete addiction :-)

While you're thinking about the lay-out of the house, an interesting book to read is 'A Pattern Language' by Christopher Alexander It's kind of a strange book, and there are a lot of things that won't be of use, such as laying out cities and towns, but there are a lot of good ideas. Many of the 'patterns' are contradictory to a certain extent, so you have to envision which ones make sense. I haven't read my copy in a while; I should go back and review it to see how many patterns I managed to incorporate in my final design.

As for bad weather- that is one of the reasons we built ICF (concrete). After 30 years in FL, we developed a real fear of hurricanes and other violent weather, thanks to the constant dire warnings from the weather department. While our small tornadoes here in SC could damage the roof, they won't knock down the steel reinforced walls. Better still, we can always go down in the basement for more protection. It's funny that as you get older, you really don't want that kind of excitement in your life. Our area recently had heavy rains that flooded homes, and there were two fatalities. We are up on a ridge, so we won't ever have to deal with that. I would rather just put a pillow over my head on a bad night than evacuate in the middle of the storm.

Book added to my read list J.

I would rather just put a pillow over my head on a bad night than evacuate in the middle of the storm.

That's also a a bonus that should be factored into your ROI.

I try to look at the cost of a house over a longer period of say 50 years. Something with a brick/concrete wall is virtually undestructeble. The upfront cost is much higher, but once it's done, it's care free. No/less costly storm damage. No worry about termites. Or having to take days off work because a work crew is fixing your house. All those things are part of the cost of ownership.

Can you give me some info about the cost of ICF? What does a form cost? The concrete. Crew etc. Or simply cost per 100 ft2

Another nice way of building is what according to Google Translate is limestone. Traditionally, they are rather large white bricks. But they are also available in really huge 'bricks'. Think about a yard long. Must weigh at least 500 pounds each.

Brick walls don't stand up to a F-5 tornado

http://www.rewardwalls.com/project-gallery/icf-buildings-and-disasters/newcastle-ok-tornado-2013/

On the other hand the owner was fine inside his tornado shelter.

I was on St croix about 6 months after a Cat 3-4 hurricane. I was stunned at the level of distruction. many buildings sheared off at the slab level with nothing left of the cmu walls except broken and twisted rebar. These house were about 250 ft above sea level so it was all wind damage.

I think in tornado ally, I would stick build, bot have a tornado shelter.

On my street are houses that date back to the 1700's- wood construction. Done properly- wood is a fine construction method. Done poorly, anything sucks.
Cheers,
Eric

Hoosier,

ICF does not need to be that expensive to build with. There are lots of options, some great and some not so great. Personally I would stay away from any grid style ICF or anything less than 2.5" per side of foam. Costs very by region as manufacture/transport play into the cost. I did RewardWalls for my home. I will try to check my reciepts tonight on what I paid for the forms but I built the house for less than $80,000.00 US dollars and that included 10 acres of land in lake subdivision with deeded access to water, well, septic for 5 bedrms, buried utilites (over 1000') driveway, site work, all inspections and permits, SIPS, roofing, Paint etc. Pretty much turn key. I still have alot of trim work/finish to do so that is not included but should give you a general idea.

I did all the work myself so I saved a lot on labor and I learned a lot by mistake.

Here is an idea for you to play with.

Build ICF walls with a brick or stone veneer. (we have a lot of artificial stone veneers made of concrete that can be laid similar to brick and are similar in cost to brick. They will be THICK, solid, and perform quite well thermally in Indiana climate. They will look good and be low maintenace and have very good resale if it ever comes to that. The house will be virtuallly sound proof and tornado proof. Use lightweight attic trusses with 10:12 pitch for the roof. This will give you bonus rooms upstairs that can later be used as bedrooms but left unfinished and unheated closed off by a downstairs door so you only have to condition the first floor the majority of the time. Inspector should not require these to be "finished" one layer sheetrock and mud should pass inspection.

Downstairs you will have no interior bearing walls so you can design whatever floor plan you want or leave it open. On first floor you will need Kitchen,1 large bedroom, bathroom, laundry. Everything else is optional.to your likeing Install T&G pine decking on the underside of the attic trusses. Use 9' high walls. This will give warm but open feeling to the interior space. You can then fill the above cavity with 8" of dense pack cellulose. Orient the sloped roof to the south for future solar. Super insulate the roof. Use a super insulated slab. The house will appear outside to be very much a traditional countryside Dutch home. Don't be afraid to spend some money for quality windows. Roughly 10 M Wide X 15 M L should make for a good footprint if you make efficient use of the space. Build it so you can add to one or both ends if you so desire.

I would suggest a smaller main floor with an initially unfinished partial or full walk-out basement if the terrain would accommodate it. Find some land with a slope to the south so that you can have the front of the house facing north with the walkout basement and the majority of the windows on the back / south side. If the basement is constructed using ICF with insulating foam under the basement slab, then little heat and cooling would be required. With ICF, you can build the basement walls and then continue on up to the rafters/roof trusses. Hang open web floor trusses for the floor system on the main floor and run all ductwork and most utilities through the open chases in the floor trusses. 18" deep open web 4x2 floor trusses with 1-1/8" Advantech sub-flooring makes for a solid and versatile floor system. Install a 2 stage geothermal heatpump with zone controls so that you can heat/cool the basement only when needed. If you want a detached garage, install it on the west or northwest side of the home to help block the hot afternoon summer sun off the home.

This is essentially what I have built, except my garage is attached and on the northeast side of my home because that is just the way the property was oriented. But I have lots of large oak trees on the west side to block the hot afternoon sun and I have no windows on the west side of the house. I did almost all of the ICF walls myself and it cost me ~$6.00/sq ft of wall area for all materials and the labor to pour the walls. If you are paying someone else to do all of the installation, figure on 2.0 to 2.5 times that amount for the ICF walls. I like brick veneer exterior for low maintenance. In my area, brick runs ~$4.00 sq ft installed including materials and labor.

Another suggestion is to install a hybrid electric/heat pump water in the basement. This would provide essentially free cooling and humidification in the basement during the summer months. If you go with a geothermal heat pump for heating and cooling, get the desuperheater option with an extra unpowered electric water heater for a buffer / storage tank plumbed in series and upstream of the finishing tank.

Pics in the tornado link above demonstrate the weak link in the typical ICF method - the wooden truss roof.

Jelly can't say for sure but the (even) weak(er) link could have been the windows. The tornado broke the glass and got extra grip from below the roof. The overhangs give it extra grip too. But at a certain strenght it breaks anything. A tornado basically has two dangers. The first one obviously is th ebrute strenghts of the wind. The second one is the junk it carries. If the winds can't get no grip on a construction, smashing a Toyota Tundra against it does wonders to punch hole in a get more grip that way.

I'm still wondering how the brick wall could have failed so badly. I think part of it is that it was just a facade wall. Brick and concrete have a different expansion coefficient* and that requires an expansion joint*. That joint greatly weakens the construction of the brick wall because basicly it breaks the whole wall into separate sections.


*=I hope that are correct translations.

Correct, the "brick wall" is just an illusion. The bricks are real but only stacked in a single wythe, and not really attached to anything, but a few strips of metal tacked at intervals to the real structure of the walls, in this case plastic strips in the ICF. So in that photo it looks like what we're seeing is the white foam of the ICF form, but those walls are still intact up to the roof line. It's just that the cosmetic brick veneer has been stripped away.

Agreed about the tornado. The windows blew out allowing uplift of the roof to occur. But if the roof were stronger (not wooden trusses) it would have been more resilient.

As mentioned above, the brick veneer is none structural. Generally,there is a 1" air gap maintained between the structural wall and the brick veneer with thin metal (22 ga) brick ties connecting the two approximately every 2-3 sq. ft. In the tornado photos provided in the link above, I doubt that any type of exterior cladding would have survived unscathed due to the flying debris. Even stucco applied directly to the ICF foam would have likely been severely damaged due to the fact that the underlying foam can compress when impacted by large forces.

With respect to wooden roof trusses attached to ICF walls, the majority I have seen are merely attached either with nails or screws to the wooden top plate that is attached to the top of the ICF concrete with anchor bolts. This is a weak link. In high wind uplift situations, either the trusses become detached from the top plate or the wooden top plate pulls away from the anchor bolts. One thing I did to help keep my trusses attached to my ICF walls is to run metal strapping that is commonly used to tie down mobile homes over the trusses and then anchor this strapping directly to the anchor bolts every 4' embedded in the concrete wall. I hope I never get to test it. I think my next weak link is the attachment of the roof decking to the trusses which could be pulled off with enough force applied.

that's why steel SIPs for roof and ICF for walls are a match made in heaven for resilient construction in the face of high wind events.

After I posted and was driving home, I thought about my ICF/brick walls with wood truss idea and yes, the roof would be the weak link and sounds foolish in terms of Tornado protection. Steel skin sips for roof would be better or even concrete/foam deck like Lite-Deck. Pressure equalization is important in tornado survival so super tight homes have a bit of a disadvantage. Seems like this would be an easy problem to solve with active pressure equalization system but apparently not.

I think few would dispute that an ICF, concrete decked safe room inside the room would provide the best personal protection. As for the house itself, the ICF walls are a superior to stick built but the roof is likely subject to F5 damage regardless unless you build underground.


I choose not to live in tornado alley for some of these reasons. Just as a side note, when I was building my ICF home, we had the main walls poured and had the gable ends stacked ready for second concrete pour when a freak F1 tornado came through and blew down the forms we had stacked. made a bit of a mess. I found pine needles driven into the foam forms like needles in a pincushion. We lost a lot of trees, twisted off about 20-30' in the air.

Even though we are not in a tornado prone area it made me aware of what could happen and glad I was building with concrete for walls. Had I been stick framing, I doubt much would have been left but the slab.

Not sure how that pressure equalization is supposed to work. Unless the system can equalize very large volumes very fast it won't work enough I think.
A concrete ceiling could be useful. A pitched roof will be ripped of unless it's really sturdy like a heavy wooden beams or welded steel. But if the wind can somehow get under the roof, all but the framework will be torn off.
The onl real solutions is a concrete pitched roof :-)

I've been thinking about heatloss on the edges of a slab.
Obviously insulation the edges is a good step to reduce the loss.
But I'm wondering if the first step shouldn't be to reduce teh need for insulation.
I live in a moderate climate and below 2ft deep is considered the frost free zone.
I don't know what the frost free zone in Indiana is but let's assume a yard.
A slab at 32F obviously is better than a slab at 0F.
I think the groundwater level should be below the slab for this idea making any sense. If the idea makes sense at all... because it means a yard deep unvented/inaccessible crawl space. Maybe the large volume of that crawlspace causes all sorts of drafts that reduce efficiency of the whole idea?
Maybe fill most of the space with sand or gravel?

(I'm quite sure I'll go for ICF from foundation to roof.)


Thoughts?

It doesn't make sense to create a crawlspace just to get access to warmer earth and/or stop edge loss - you can do that with a slab on grade and insulation. On the other hand, if you are going to use ICFs anyway, then putting some of the living space underground (eg, a basement) might make sense from a cost/energy standpoint.

Maybe I should just stop looking at thermal bridges in drawings :-) I see lots of insulation around the house but when looking at point where the walls rest on the slab I see little to no insulation. I'm fully aware it depends a *lot* on the soil; my parents 90 year old 2 story brick house is build on on a very simple foundation. A few feet deep ditch partly filled rubble. Cement poured over it. On top of that a cavity wall. The floor of the house isn't really connected to the outside walls. It just touches the wall but isn't part of the structure. Is that sort of foundation common in the USA?