Living Off Grid: Insulated Concrete Forms

Reader Contribution by Ed Essex
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A lot has been written about insulated concrete forms (ICFs) the past few years but mostly by manufacturers. We have two winters and one summer under our belts now and it’s time to weigh in from a home owners point of view. Our temperature extremes run from 105F in the summer to -9F in the winter so we have a pretty good idea of how well this insulated building system has performed.

ICFs are usually 2′ long x 1′ high x 2 1/4″ wide Expanded Polystyrene panels that are stackable and fit together like Legos. Plastic inserts hold the inside and outside panels together creating a space to be filled with concrete. The end result is a concrete wall with 2 ¼” insulation on both the inside and outside.

I’m not going to get into a lot of the selling points for ICFs in this blog. I’ll let the marketing departments and you or your contractor figure out what is and isn’t true about the so called advantages for using this system to build the walls of your home. I will say there are some advantages for sure but not all of their marketing claims are accurate. I would rather speak to my own experiences as a home owner and general contractor about the results we got in our home.

There is no question this is a good building system over all but as with any system there are items in both the Plus and the Minus columns. Those are what I would like to focus on for this article.

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