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building costs
ICF is a good system, unfortunately the shipping and other logistics problems of using it is often insurmountable, especially in remote or disaster-stricken areas.
I mis-typed, the figures I quoted were meant to reflect what they say COULD be salvaged out of what the storms brought down.
Best of luck.
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I don't think the people I have been using have considered the logistics of shipping. They tend to use a normal rig and you get stuck with a large bill for shipping air. I talked with a distributor today and he does not keep any blocks on hand, do to the damage of the blocks which can occur.
I have a few ideas to remove the problems, both in construction and transport, but the people in Cobourge Ont are not into radical innovation. They are military by the numbers types.
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Peters, we watched a contractor using the ICF system to build a place just down the beach from us in the Bahamas.
Container after container arrived, as you described it, importing Canadian air, trapped in foam.
The poor fellow was told by the Government officials that our house was also a 'formed concrete' house, when he came to see he asked how many containers our place took to build. When I told him "one" I thought was going to fall over.
When I further told him that that one container also held all the appliances, plumbing fixtures and windows, he was in disbelief, I had to drag out the pictures to show him.
But that is the difference between a product that "nests" compared to shipping air.
I know the people in Cobourg, they are good folks, but you are right, innovation is not their strong suit.
Best of luck.
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Peters, I don't know anything about ICF but I am going to research the product. I don't know if builders are using it in the local area, if not it maybe be too costly. Thanks for the info. Dave
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I just finished my house, 2900 sf + walkout basement, with the Nudura ICF, made in Canada. 8' long forms, 18" tall, that fold flat and hinge open, no assembling the webs. My entire house of forms would have probably fit in a shipping container, It was hauled to my site in two trips with an 18' bumper pull flat bed trailer.
The bigger problem is concrete - Here, (in Colorado) the fed's came in and made the stucco compaines that have their cement factories start shipping 2 truckloads of cement south every week. Forget the free market, concrete here is now both more expensive and rationed. Hence my post on the PTO cement mixers for my small projects - The yards will not sell anything less than 20 yards, since their big municipal customers contractors are getting on the waiting lists and buying all the product. If you hire a contractor that does a lot of business, he can get concrete, but there is still a waiting list.
And the price us up to $85 a yard (from $62 a year ago) with another increase coming in Janurary.
However, the ICF house is wonderful. We don't even notice when 60-90mph winds come down off the foothills when a big storm is coming in. My neighbors sleep in their basement on those nights so they don't have to hear the wind.
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The blocks Murf and I are alluding to nest fairly tight. I believe I used 6 stacks (pallets) for the 42 x 60 foot barn with 12 ft walls. The six stacks take up some 16 ft on an 8 ft wide trailer. The trouble is the stack weighs less than 200 lbs. You don't need a regular truck to ship them.
The other problems is that althought the expanding bead process is relatively simple, the steam expanding equipment and cooling equipment takes up considerable space. I was thinking of an alternate method of block production that you could back in a couple of containers and move to any location. Why move a mountain of foam to the customers?
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Peters, I already have such a thing, but it doesn't take up any more room than a small suitcase, never mind even a single container.
Best of luck.
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The materials for self expanding systems are expensive so there goes you cost advantage. The molds for blocks are larger than a suit case.
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Ahh, see there's the problem, you're not thinking 'outside the blocks',  .
Why re-invent the wheel?
Foam is readily available oll over the world already. Why not merely have a small hotwire cutting sytem and a small hot insertion tool for the plastic spacer then use locally sourced foam?
Then all you have to ship is a small box of plastic spacers and the know-how. ;->
Best of luck.
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Murf;
That's what the Dow system is, to a greater or lesser extend. It has not sold well. And like the boys in Cobourg will not readily jump to a new idea.
The ARXX system provides more than just a block. The locking of the blocks together is an assist in construction. To have the earth quake rating they have developed the X in the blocks. I would not build without the fir strips in the blocks for anchoring. This requires the foam to be molded around them or multi piece braces.
I had also worked with new material so I could precoat the blocks with bonding material.
I tried to get Nova chem. excited about the project but you know how large companies are. Unfortunately I was not born with a silver spoon and have had some large financial set backs (two house fires) so.
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