Rural Builder The ICF Which Sold Itself

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September 1, 1999

You might say it was love at first sight when Adam Steinberg saw an insulated concrete forming system demonstrated on TV's This Old House program. Or at least he saw right away how it could help him and wife, Joyce, build a snug new home near Lodi, Wis., that was environmentally friendly.

"It was perfect," he says. "It's energy efficient, it goes up fast, it has thermal mass, it is very easy to build with."

Scott McNeill, the contractor who installed the system for Steinberg's house, couldn't agree more.

The result is a home which boasts a variety of energy efficient design features: in-floor radiant heat, passive solar heat, and site orientation that takes advantage of the suns position during different seasons and the moderating influence of earth banked high against three sides of his building. I-joists, which are manufactured from wood taken from trees not grown for dimension lumber, support a loft and the cathedral roof.

But Steinberg, who can take primary credit for the design of the home, first had to find a source for insulated concrete forms (ICFs) and a contractor to install them. The contractor he selected McNeill Enterprises of Waunakee, WI "had never done a whole house before" using insulated concrete forming systems," says the soft-spoken Steinberg. "But he was the only person in this area last summer using them."

McNeill has two more ICF homes on his schedule and can tout the benefits with the best of them. "It's coming. I've gone through the learning curve and saw the benefits to me and the customer right off the bat," he says.

Steinberg, an Artist in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had engineering help with the project. So he was never skeptical about the ability of foam walls to hold concrete. "I was more concerned about the CFCs," he says. But the system selected is manufactured by Reward Wall Systems, and it doesn't use CFCs, a substance that gets blamed for depleting the earths ozone layer.

There were a number of features about Reward's product that attracted Steinberg.

"It has built-in plastic fastening strips that run from floor to ceiling that you can use to attach drywall and exterior siding," he says. The strips are clearly indicated on both walls of the forming blocks.

Top and bottom edges of each block overlap, making them easy to stack and align. The blocks have built-in ties and a cradle to hold reinforcing bars.

"It's extremely energy efficient," adds McNeill, noting that Reward rates the effective R-value of Steinberg's walls at 38. Additional insulation wasn't needed.

The blocks were stacked the full 16-ft.-tall height of the home's walls. McNeill uses a relatively stiff concrete in his ICF buildings, since thinner mixes have more water which increases weight and can cause bulges in the forms. Instead he has a plasticizer added at the ready-mix plant which improves the flow through all the nooks and crannies of the forms.

Three dabs of glue are applied to the edges of each block to help hold them in place until bracing is installed and concrete is poured.

Concrete was poured in 4-ft. levels around the home until it was topped off.

Wall construction was begun in the winter, Steinberg noted, and part of the concrete was poured in temperatures below freezing, an advantage available to builders using insulated forms.

"It's great; I love it," Steinberg says of his new house and the ICF system.

"I see a bright future for concrete homes in general," adds McNeill. "It's a strong home, and the owners are less likely to be subject to cyclical fuel prices because of their energy efficiency."