Hi All
Was talking to a plumber today in south Sask. He said that in Calgary they have had a problem with mold between the insulated concrete forms and the concrete and had to pull them out. He said the sand/ gravel had top soil blowen in and that is what the mold grew on.
I have lived in an ICF house since 1997 3 stories. The next urban legend?
So all you folks from Cow town,
Have you heard anything? Since the Riders played possum Go Stampeders Beat BC
Regards
Brendaan
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Maybe he does not like ICF and will resort to whatever straws he can grasp.
I envy your house situation.
Is it warm, quiet and comfy?
Speaking of straws, at least you have not used bales.
Yes it is warm and comfy and quiet!
After my first post I was thinking if some topsoil/mold eatable organics contaminated the mix would the calcium in the cement not kill off mold spores or disperse and encapsulate the little buggers?
I still see old style forms used on basements and scratch my head! Guess change is slow coming.
Another question Why is apartments and Condos not being built with ICF'S as they meet fire rating, sound rating and surely be cost effective for fire walls and on going maintenance. for example in a rental situation if a low life tried to punch a wall if they hit an ICF it would be the last time they threw a punch for a while!
Not sure about the mold issue but I can say in my area in Florida, they stick frame all apartments. And do them as cheaply as possible. Reason being and all the contractors and developers will tell you this, they plan on a lifespan of the complexes at 25 years as by then they know the property will be worth alot more so will just rip them down and resell the land for a new use. I've seen it happen to a few developments that were built when I was a kid about 30 years ago. Quality of construction or longevity is not a priority.
A 5 or 6 story condo building just went up about 5 minutes away from my place.. all ICF.
Off topic, re: CFL.
I remember seeing a special on PBS called "What makes Canadians funny",
it was hysterical with Michale J Fox as moderator and Lorne Michaels, Martin Short and Eugen Levy as panelists.
Anywho, Short is describing how in Canada, you could pass by a TV set playing a CFL game and ask "Who's winning?" and someone would respond "Riders 13, Roughriders 12", and you would know who was Ottawa and who was Sask.
This from a lifelong Riders fan. RIP Russ Jackson.
Urban legend wanna be for the reasons you gave.
The sole reason ICF's aren't more wide spread is because of the millions of people experianced with stick building and less than 1% of new homes being made with ICF's
There are some massive efficencies to be gained as ICF construction becomes more wide spread.
Locally ICF's amount to over 4% of new home contruction because of aggressive marketing by the cement companies. Because of that experianced contractors are able to build ICF homes with little or no premium.
ICF have gone crazy here on the gulf, couple years ago, I never saw one. Today I know of at least, thirty going up. Including three floors condos.
They really make sense in high wind areas like hurricanes and tornados. I mean they already can be rated for 200 MPH winds something no stick framed house will do..
Plus in southern locations where termits are a serious threat they'd starve to death eating concrete.
I thought some termites still dug into foam, as some SIPS use borax in their mix?Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CAAlso a CRX fanatic!
Tu stultus es
it's possible to no avail.. Termits need a reason to live someplace and they don't like to commute to where they eat.. since they aren't attracted to foam or concrete there is little reason for them to want to move in..
The main reason they are not more wide spread is the cost. Most people want the cheapest route not the more expensive.
let's look at costs for a minute.. ICF's are made with foam, a couple of chemicals mixed together and poof foam.. not exactly the most expensive product on the planet and definetly cheaper than growing a tree for 100 years and then harvesting to waste 50% of it in the forest (limbs and tops)
On top of that the wood needs to be hauled from the forest, sent to a sawmill, where an additional 30% of the bole is wasted. Then sent to a kiln and finally shipped across country to a building site where even more is wasted..
Shipping wood across country is heavy and requires powerful and expensive trucks or trains to move..
Shipping foam locally is much more fuel efficent.. Concrete too is made from local ingrediants..
Less than 1% of all new homes are built with ICF's so there are massive efficencies to be gained as they become more wide spread in use..
Finally there are first costs with a home and there are constant costs with a home.
Heating for example.. ICF's are massively more energy efficent than wood homes. In my case I saved over $300 a month on my heating bill.. using the same furnance and heating 2 times as much space with 3 times as many windows.. now carry that cost forward into the next several decades or centuries and you see the first cost isn't the real costs are they?
That doesn't include cooling costs which could be similar. Nor does it include the cost of rot which is all too common on wooden houses or the effects of termites etc..
It's true that you used to be able to build a log cabin cheaper than you could build a stick framed house but as more people learned how to build stick framed houses efficently that became the norm.. It's now time to move on..
You are right on the energy costs French but only in a cold climate like you live in Minnesota. In a warmer climate you will be a long time waiting to recoup the costs with the energy savings.
I have access locally to Arxx and Logix but the Arxx they want to send a specialist to "help" me do it so i don't use them.
Maybe their are other brands that are cheaper? but for just doing a foundation even with figuring in the later insulating cost it is about 30 percent higher. Houses are about 25 percent higher.
Not sure what you mean by massive efficiencies to be gained as they get more widespread but they have to come down in price a fair bit to be used throughout the country.
What do you spend on airconditioning? Insulation works for both you know.. To give you an example in the summer here temps get into the 90's and sometimes over 100 but what makes it unbearable is our humidity. It's sometimes so thick we need to wear scuba gear to breath <grin>
Anyway my old house which was well insulated by local standards I used to need to run the A/c for hundreds of hours a summer just to make things liveable..
With my house (2 times as large 3 times the number of windows) I use one less A/C unit and on average have to run the A/C less than 10 hours last summer.
As for efficencies.. I learned so much doing my house that I know my second house would take me less than 1/2 the time. There is a great deal to gain over and above that as well.
Around here about 4% of the homes are built with ICF's (much higher than the less than 1% nationally) yet those who have enough experiance that there is little or no premium charged for ICF's. At first there was about a 10% premium but eventually that dropped to 8% and the most recent homes were built for the same price as stick building..
Now part of that discount was the mad scramble for work thet went on in the last few years.
Finally the ease ICF's go together made it simple for me to build on my own.. the labor savings alone saved me over $10,000 on my foundation bids.. When I speak about ease I am not kidding.. I did mine with no prior experiance simply watching the video they provided was enough. however I went on vacation and came back bedridden.. a month later my sister-in-law came over and finished it.. she had less than a 30 minute drug slurred instruction from me It took her an afternoon (her and my two daughters)
When I had recovered I had a kid help me put the scaffolding in place and then called the redi mix company.
The kid spent about 2 hours with the hose and the guy running the pumper's guidance and we were done!
The next time I did it I went way beyond what the instructions said and it went even easier! I built in the round and if you go to 94041.1 you'll see what I did.
ICF's are so easy that it's almost a sin to pay someone else to do it..
Frenchy i build homes and love to use icf, but... the price is higher. It is not in labor or from an additional premium, the fact is they are more expensive to build with. Maybe when more manafacturers make them and the material price comes down and maybe when concrete drops but they are more expensive and not many people in a mild climate on the west coast here will pay extra for it.
It was just over six months ago i did a foundation with icf and in that time lumber has dropped to lower than when i first started building in 1986.
I accept that in your location ICF's are a premium. They probably are in most of the country..
However as you point out there is little competition yet in that market place and since less than 1% of the homes built in the country are built with ICF's there is little to force manufacters into finding those production savings where deep discounts will come from.
In addition why would a contractor knowing there is a premium for a given product be willing to discount his labor? It's likely that his crew is aware that he is one of a few contractors skilled and efficent at building with ICF's or he uses ICF construction as a rewarding interlude to normal construction..
PLus I have yet to see the real benefits of ICF's properly used. I'm talking about installing electrical and plumbing into the blocks before the concrete is pumped.. The ease of those tasks compared to installing wiring in wood etc. should provide some further cost savings from those subs..
Since so very few electricians and plumbers have any real experiance they charge a premium for a task that should be easier..
When you say there is a 25% premium for ICF's over Stick framed, how do you figure that?
Are you saying that a stick framed house that would cost $250,000 costs $312,500 done in ICF's ?
Or are you saying that the framing package which costs $62,500 to stick frame will cost $78,125?
Does that calculation include the cost of insulation in both instances?
You mentioned you used them for a foundation. I'm interested in a comparison of those costs if you got prices for a block wall foundation, a poured wall foundation and a prefabbed foundation over the costs of an ICF foundation..
In my case I saved $10,000 over the lowest bid I got but that clearly isn't fair since I didn't compare apples to apples.. Would there be a $10,000 savings if I did the labor on the other choices?
Ok you have to quit using the word premium, i am talking about the actual cost of material and labor. About half of my jobs the plumbers and electricians are cost plus too, so quit worrying about some unknown premium.
So all we do here is poured concrete foundation or icf block on top of footing. I think in your case Frenchy you had builders giving you ski hi prices because 10 000 is a whole lot of labor to save on. That's a week and a half for our crew and i can't imagine any foundation taking longer than that.
During the heady days when I started my home getting anyone to bid was considered a major success. (let alone competitive bids) Add my location and I'm sure contractors thought well if he can afford to live there......
Now add the fact that it was a one time only deal with no possiblity of future work and they were already fully booked up well into the next year, Yes they wanted a premium for the work..
As for cost plus jobs, Without an incentive to speed things up, to gain efficencies I don't see how they can be a benefit to the homeowner...If it takes an additional 8 hours because the subcontractor doesn't feel like putting their best most efficent efforts forward that's simply added costs to whoever is paying the bills.
I saw a classic case of that myself when I hired a roofing crew to do an easy section of my roof..
I agreed to pay them an hourly wage and what should have been done in a day stretched out to over a week.. New housing construction had already slowed down dramatically and they needed income to tide them over.. They got it at my expense..
Previously they would have done that much roof in about a day of labor and their work was always top notch..plus there were many flaws in the work they did.. In fact it's the only section of my house that leaks.. What I did is as dry as a bone..
Finally there is a premium with ICF's over stick framing.. we've agreed that it is more thermally efficent.. less prone to insect damage or water damage.. and in the earthquake regions of the country it is less likely to fail.. On top of that is the silence of ICF's over stick framing.. Plus the benefit of reduced likelyhood of fire. (concrete doesn't burn very well)
Those are premium features and should command a premium price..
You forgot to mention that if you don't get it right during the pour, there's no chance of re-doing it. Make sure to use plenty of bracing.
Unless you pour in the round like I did my last one. Then just for giggles I set all of the braces 1/2" loose. I actaully had no braces but the pumper guy wouldn't pump without bracing so like I said I set them 1/2 loose. concrete thundered in and a few minutes later I was done..
Do do this at home kids, very special circumstances.
"As for cost plus jobs, Without an incentive to speed things up, to gain efficencies I don't see how they can be a benefit to the homeowner...If it takes an additional 8 hours because the subcontractor doesn't feel like putting their best most efficent efforts forward that's simply added costs to whoever is paying the bills. "Contractors like that tend to not stay around too long if they are not producing. A fixed price contract includes money to cover the estimate and material price hours and also allows enough to cover small unforseen or forgotten items or time. Cost plus is the cheapest for the homeowner, but the need for trust on both sides is paramount.Unfortunately for you your roofer is a loser and should be an employee rather than a business.My business is based on what the costs of operating are. I have my employees cost, insurance, tool supply, taxation costs, licenses, etc and then i have a markup on top of everything. Doesn't matter what material i am using my fixed costs don't change. What you are saying is that if i sheet one wall with OSB at $10.00 a sheet and another wall with plywood at $15.00 a sheet i should be charging more cause the plywood is a premium product??? That would go over well with customers!
The costs also include labor costs.. In fact labor is the biggest varable of all.
Various framers I sold telehandlers to charged from under $5.00 a sq. ft. to well over $12.00 a sq. ft. Now granted those varables included such intangables as simple repetative construction to complex one off construction.. but there was usually a seperate charge for complex construction like bump outs and cut up multiplane roofs.
My understanding of cost plus contracts was there was no bid to adhere to and thus no time limit.. I never saw outright fraud but I definately saw the differance in performance between bid contracts and cost plus contracts.. The only motivation they had to finish a job was another job starting soon.
Well lets just say that you haven't found any reputable contractors you can trust. My employees don't know if it is a contract or cost plus, they work or they are down the road. Just finished a kitchen reno/timber frame entry and tile work on the floors this past summer. Was for a friend of a customer i had five years ago. One other contractor bid and came in at 56 000 and my bid was for 48 000. We went with cost plus after i told him that i priced it quite firm depending on the variables. Total price came to 39000 and we built the cabinets and did the tile work too. And there were a number of wiring and plumbing issues that had to be addressed that would have knocked another 5000 off if they weren't there.There is money to be saved and we still get a good wage good job.
I got only one timberframer who was even willing to give me a rough estimate of the house I finally built.
His estimate was over 2 million dollars.. (the rest were simply too busy) I eventually built it for a little over $200,000. Now those numbers don't include a penny for the labor I put into it nor does it reflect any of the really great deals I got on materials.. Not to mention the stuff I recycled. Oh and free use of telehandlers and other equipment from the company I worked for..
Basically that was materials and the occasional labor needed when I couldn't do things myself like place the roof trusses in place or install the SIP's etc..
Was that 2 million dollar estimate wrong? I don't think so. I think it was a busy contractor who wanted a economic reward to tackle something he wasn't comfortable doing in the first place.. (a double timberframe with the inside frame connected to the outsaide frame). It also reflected the cost of things at retail rather than the deep discount I was able to get.. Plus a guess for the unknowns..
I've sold equipment to contractors for 17 1/2 years and I am very well versed on the way they conduct business. Most are hard working and earn every dime they are paid. There are of course exceptions but they are just that exceptions..
I will leave it at that, because you keep contradicting yourself on every issue. Cheers