Hi,
I am starting to second guess myself about this house design and your opinions are needed and welcome.
Been planning this house for years now, one main floor with full daylight basement underneath, in cloudy/rainy western Oregon. The plan has always been to use full ICF walls for both levels. However, we want lots of windows to get as much light as we can into the house. Using ICFs for the below grade walls makes sense to me, but I am now starting to think that ICFs might not be the best plan for the main floor because…
1. We would be punching lots of holes into these R25-ish walls and filling them with R4 windows.
2. We would have to put in huge extension jambs for all those windows in the 20″ thick walls.
3. Having heavy above grade concrete walls in seismic western Oregon creates issues with engineering, more rebar, etc.
What do you think? Should we at least consider switching to a different wall type for the main floor? If so what?
Thanks
Replies
If you want energy efficiency other than ICFs, use SIPs or frame and insulaate with spray foaam urethene.
I'm trying to figure how you end up with 20" thick walls. An R-22+ ICF with stucco is 12". If you furr out and sheetrock inside, that adds up to maybe 13.5" so what kind of siding brings you to 20"??? Brick veneer?
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I am looking now at Arxx ICFs.
Due to seismic constraints (seismic D2), it seems that I may need the 10" concrete wall in the basement with lots of reinforcement too. I am pretty sure I remember people here at Breaktime strongly recommending that it is much easier to use one ICF wall thickness throughout rather than switch to a thinner wall for the upper story(s). So, 10" concrete, 5" foam, 2-1/2" of synthetic stone exterior, furring out the inner wall (which also seems to be a recommended thing to do), and then drywall gets us pretty close to 20" I think.
Ouch!
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I used the Polysteel blocks and decreased the wall at the subfloor. The 11" block sits on the shoulder of the 13" so you don't loose your level line. Here's a link on the block dimensions <http://www.polysteel.com/pdf/PS4000%20InstallGuide%20REV%20PG%2012.pdf>
Unfortunately I believe they only come in 8" and 6" thick concrete.Rip