ICF houses?
Have you, or anyone you know, built a house out of ICF (insulated concrete form) in NY or Brooklyn? I stumbled across a website, found the idea fascinating, and kicking a few ideas around in my head. I’d heard of poured concrete houses in post-war Britain and had negative associations with it but this sounds…
Have you, or anyone you know, built a house out of ICF (insulated concrete form) in NY or Brooklyn? I stumbled across a website, found the idea fascinating, and kicking a few ideas around in my head.
I’d heard of poured concrete houses in post-war Britain and had negative associations with it but this sounds like a different kettle of fish. Apparently 8% of US houses are built with this method so hopefully someone has come across it.
I like the idea of building a classic Victorian design but with the modern benefits you’d get from ICF (quick and solid construction, flexibility, energy efficiency, etc).
I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on prices for build plus any pros and cons (especially the cons as the websites tout all the benefits!)
Thanks in advance.
The Chicken
I’m an architect who specializes in sustainable residential design, and I’d have to agree with cmu, to a point. ICF’s have a lot of potential and have begun being used in a lot of different applications, but they really don’t make sense for single family homes or most small scale buildings in a city environment.
There are a lot of issues with ICF’s that are great, but don’t apply to single family construction.
The first is that it can be quite labor intensive. Similar to any concrete building, you end up building the structure twice; once with the forms and another time with the concrete. This is fine if you really need the strength of concrete, but for a victorian, it’s overkill.
For a free-standing house, building concrete walls would be a nightmare. Concrete is great when you can pour a lot of it at a time in long, uninterrupted expanses. A house has too many doors and windows, and a victorian especially, is known for intricate building shapes with separate volumes and many angles.
You might say that you should use the ICF’s for the basement, and you’d be right. ICF’s will provide better insulation than standard concrete of block foundation walls, but what are you insulating from? The earth is almost always a more comfortable temperature than the air, which is why most basements aren’t insulated on the outside.
For a single family, free standing home, you’re better off looking into SIP’s (Structural Insulated Panels), but even they can be more trouble than they’re worth. It would really depend upon the design.
Another alternative that we’ve begun exploring is having custom designed homes pre-fabricated off-site and delivered to the site. Fabricators claim construction costs can be cut in half and delivery time cut to a few months. Any design can be made as long as it can be divided in modules that would fit onto a truck. Construction quality is on par with or better than site-built because it’s built under controlled settings, indoors, safe from the elements.
And then of course, there’s a host of other sustainable and green alternative products that can be incorporated into pre-fab or site built homes.
I have a lot of experience working in this area and would be happy to speak with you about it. Feel free to call or email if you’re interested.
Jim Hill
Urban Pioneering Architecture
http://www.urban-pioneering.com
thanks guys. If I go down this route then I’ll definitely post about it but I’m at the very preliminary stages of my research.
I can’ speak for NYC construction, but in PR it was way more expensive to build with ICF. Maybe that was due to the cost of concrete and the learning curve of the crew, but that was the case so we opted out even though it would be great in hurricanes. I hear the savings is in energy consumption after build. Look into recycled forms.
NYC seems to be stuck in the late 20th century as far as building materials is concerned. I bet you’ll have a hard time finding a construction company that’s even heard of this. But the idea is very sound, and saves money as well compared to cinderblock/block construction.
If you do go ahead, would you post some comments on your experience?
The recently completed Habitat For Humanity houses on Halsey were built with ICF.
http://www.habitatnyc.org/construction_current.html