Building With ICF's - The New Concrete House

 When it comes to house building and construction, ICFs (insulated concrete forms) are revolutionizing the industry. It used to be that if you were constructing a new home, you had few alternatives. Until recently, most new homes were built using traditional wood-framed walls. When it came to creating a new home, all trades had practically gotten to the point where they could only make wood-frame walls.

A home with a complete brick walls as possible, but it was little more than a masonry facade above wood-frame construction. An all-brick home was impracticable because of the necessity for high wall insulation for heating and cooling; therefore, a wood-framed structure with brick veneer was built.

Concrete homes were abysmal 40 years ago, but they've since improved. Because of the lack of cost-effective solutions available to the construction professions, the outside of a concrete wall was left bare or painted. Office and government buildings flocked to the style, but it proved a disaster for private residences. Of course, there was a similar difficulty with insulation between brick and concrete walls.

Since the introduction of ICFs, all of that has altered. The idea is pretty straightforward. With the use of contemporary rigid foam insulation, an ICF creates a wall that is both labor and material-efficient and economical. There are three main components to the ICFs now available on the market. Rigid foam insulation forms the innermost layer. It is common for each piece to be 2 to 3 inches thick, 30 to 40 inches long, and 12 to 16 inches tall as many sections are cut and interlocked to construct the wall's interior. The foam on the outside completes the second layer. Most of the time, it's the same as the inner layer of foam, but there are now a lot of firms that provide an option to connect vinyl or wood siding to the exterior of the home. There are wire or plastic connections that link the outer foam to the inner foam with a 4- to 12-inch space in between for pouring the reinforced concrete wall. You'll finish up with a sandwich of three layers after you're done with the wall. Fiberglass reinforcing rods and rigid foam insulation are used to create a barrier. Because of the connections, the foam is now a component of the structure.

It used to be necessary to build a form and then remove it once the concrete had dried to construct a traditional concrete wall. It took a lot of time and effort, but the result was a sturdy wall with almost little insulating value. On the other hand, ICF's foam performs four things at once. Forming an excellent surface for attaching interior and exterior finishing finishes, it serves as a concrete form, insulates the wall, and creates a vapor barrier. It's simple to install and won't need to be removed after the concrete has dried. ICFs may be used from the foundations of a structure to the top. A building wall that is better in almost every manner is the result. ICF foundation building has several benefits over traditional masonry construction, including greater strength, superior sound absorption, greater thermal mass, more superficial heating and cooling, and the absence of wood that may decay and develop mold. Because ICFs and traditional wood frame construction have the same exterior siding choices, your house will mix in well with the rest of the community. The only distinction seen from the outside is that the walls are thicker than they would be in wood-framed construction.