Anyone with ICF building experience?

[dalola]

A straight forward layout such as you describe lends itself well to timber frame and SIPs. I'm wary of log homes simply because of the maintenance issues, settling, and FLIES. I know many of these issues have been resolved over the years with improved products and techniques but, at my age, I wanted LOW MAINTENANCE. If you can find a standard layout which gives you what you want, I'd recommend going that route. Then take the money you save by not going down the custom design wormhole and add some unique finishes and features to your place to make it your own.

A lack of experienced ICF contractors may well push me in that direction anyway, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Curious to your "flies" remark.....must be a story there? That, or "FLIES" stands for something I'm not familiar with!

 

[grsthegreat]

A lack of experienced ICF contractors may well push me in that direction anyway, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Curious to your "flies" remark.....must be a story there? That, or "FLIES" stands for something I'm not familiar with!

ill tell you, ever log home ive been ih has a huge fly issue up here in north idaho. i really dont know why. My friend has 2 log homes, and the one that isnt used much will be covered in dead flies when you go into it.

 

[fiddlearound]

I've owned my self built log home for over forty years and have had NO problems with flies. EVER! Don't know what that reference is about. Just a safe, secure low maintenance home.

 

[dalola]

Interesting thing with the flies.... I'd have to assume a fly issue would have to do with gaps around windows, joints, etc.. where the flies get in as the weather turns cooler. One of my friends with a log home recently discovered bats in a void next to the chimney that wasn't properly sealed up. Amazing how mother nature will find every little "issue" when you get your house built. :confused2:

 

[DirtRanger]

Haven't posted here much but seeing someone else's experience with Faswall, thought I'd chime in. My wife and I just moved into our Faswall home we've been working on, DIY, for 7 years. We built a ranch style single story home with a walk out basement. What we did was pour our footings and then put one row of Faswall and used that row to be the forms for the slabs. Both the house and basement have concrete slab floors and we stained the concrete in the house. So it's pretty much like an adobe house in that the temperature doesn't fluctuate very much...when it's hot outside it feels like you're walking into a refrigerator when you open the door and when it's cold it feels warm. The basement has 11 yds of concrete in the walls and the house has 26yds. We just had a fairly sharp earthquake here a couple of nights ago and it knocked a couple of things over in the curio cabinet but otherwise no damage. My contractor friend is a good builder but wasn't much on pre-figuring out electrical and plumbing and since I'm the diy architect, we mostly had to do that stuff after the walls were up. With the Faswall, since it's basically wood chips, anything that will cut wood will cut it. So we ended up making chases on top of the walls and then gouging out the Faswall to run our armored cable and plumbing. Got really good at 'chousing' (electrician term) or gouging out the block. We got a sheet of galvanized metal and had it sheared to different widths to make nail protection plates. The outside is finished in stucco and the inside is drywall. I had to make strips of plywood to furr out off of the blocks around the windows so the drywall would look good. It turned out great! We actually had some block leftover due to some changes along the way and we built another small building, our power house (we're off grid here), and it turned out great as well. Lots of concrete, lots of steel...gonna be here a long time. Oh yeah, and we did some of our own testing, leaving blocks out all winter to see if that affected anything and also trying to light a block on fire with a torch...nothin'.

 

[dalola]

Haven't posted here much but seeing someone else's experience with Faswall, thought I'd chime in. My wife and I just moved into our Faswall home we've been working on, DIY, for 7 years. We built a ranch style single story home with a walk out basement. What we did was pour our footings and then put one row of Faswall and used that row to be the forms for the slabs. Both the house and basement have concrete slab floors and we stained the concrete in the house. So it's pretty much like an adobe house in that the temperature doesn't fluctuate very much...when it's hot outside it feels like you're walking into a refrigerator when you open the door and when it's cold it feels warm. The basement has 11 yds of concrete in the walls and the house has 26yds. We just had a fairly sharp earthquake here a couple of nights ago and it knocked a couple of things over in the curio cabinet but otherwise no damage. My contractor friend is a good builder but wasn't much on pre-figuring out electrical and plumbing and since I'm the diy architect, we mostly had to do that stuff after the walls were up. With the Faswall, since it's basically wood chips, anything that will cut wood will cut it. So we ended up making chases on top of the walls and then gouging out the Faswall to run our armored cable and plumbing. Got really good at 'chousing' (electrician term) or gouging out the block. We got a sheet of galvanized metal and had it sheared to different widths to make nail protection plates. The outside is finished in stucco and the inside is drywall. I had to make strips of plywood to furr out off of the blocks around the windows so the drywall would look good. It turned out great! We actually had some block leftover due to some changes along the way and we built another small building, our power house (we're off grid here), and it turned out great as well. Lots of concrete, lots of steel...gonna be here a long time. Oh yeah, and we did some of our own testing, leaving blocks out all winter to see if that affected anything and also trying to light a block on fire with a torch...nothin'.

Awesome info DirtRanger, thanks for sharing! Are you by chance in Alaska? You know the next question...I'm gonna need to see A LOT of pix! (assuming you took a few along the way...)

I'm curious how those concrete floors are done above grade with the ICF's....any detail pix of that stage? Did you do radiant in-floor heat?

 

[hawkeye08]

My daughter and SIL that are building looked at ICF, Faswall, SIPs, and anything they found to consider.. They house plan is daylight basement with garage in a quarter of it. The backwall (in the hillside) is 10" concrete, then the other 3 walls (1 of 3 has short concrete wall) are SIPs, then a "floor system" then SIPs for main floor, then conventional trusses and roof. They might have gone with the T studs (insulated studs) but not sure they knew about them. They are doing as much as they can themselves. They hired a guy for foundation and did a bunch of the labor. The prep for the slab is in progress, plumbing done, backfill done, compaction done, gravel in progress, foam onsite ready, slab pour scheduled July 2nd. SIPs scheduled July 8th, floor system in next two weeks..

If you are doing it yourself, figure out what works for you and what you can afford, doing research on here is great, lots of various opinions and viewpoints.

A humorous note, when we build our house using SIPs (floor, walls, roof), the inspector really didn't have any knowledge and spent some time on phone with manufacturer to understand. We had it all closed in and he said since it was so tight, we had to vent it. He made us cut holes in each room and put a vent to outside in (3" filtered vent).

 

[DirtRanger]

This shows the first course of the basement walls sitting on the footer, then ready to pour the slab with the blocks as forms, and then the slab with two courses up. We're in N. Calif. and the climate is pretty mild so we didn't do any radiant heating in the floors.

 

[DirtRanger]

First photo is basement block stacked, braced, and ready for concrete. Then going around and around filling walls. Having scaffolding inside for stacking higher courses of block and then pouring concrete is crucial. These walls took 11yds.

 

[DirtRanger]

First photo shows what Faswall blocks actually look like. They have a notch on one side and they're stacked notch to notch and flat to flat, making a horizontal rebar every 16" and a vertical bar every 8". We used regular CMUs for the footer on the main part of the house and then Faswall. Third photo shows shape of the house, an open V shape. Basement is on the left side and we put 4x12s on 16" centers with plywood then the slab over the whole thing. The black tube sticking up is for fresh, cool air for the solarium.