7 Drawbacks to ICF Construction -- Problems with Insulated Concrete Forms

what's up guys garrett here and today i wanted to talk to you about the drawbacks of icf construction now i'm always going to be one to praise icf for the high effective r values the incredible comfort of the home and consistency throughout the huge strength in those walls the ease and speed of constructability there's so many good things about icf but you know i spent two years building using that icf and there are a few drawbacks to it so here are the seven drawbacks to icf construction now the first drawback to icf construction is you're most likely going to have to redesign your plans now there are icf plans out there and if you find those that's great you can skip this however the majority of them are made for 2x4 2x6 homes so you're going to have to hire an architect or somebody to redraw those plans to accommodate the thickness of that icf block in my case my house plans were drawn up for 2x6 construction so i had to have them modified for my block now that costs an extra 2500 bucks so it is fairly substantial but it sure makes the layout whenever you're actually building the house a heck of a lot easier when you have the exact dimensions of everything also remember that you're probably going to have to scale up the size of your house whenever you're adjusting your house plans now you don't want to lose a bunch of interior space due to the thickness of those icf blocks so that means that your house is actually going to grow out to accommodate that extra thickness the second drawback to icf is the physical size of the blocks themselves and they're pretty darn big they're generally a foot thick to 16 inches tall and four feet wide so moving them around takes some doing now when you buy them you generally buy them by the bundle which has 12 blocks in them it's roughly four foot wide four foot deep and four feet tall and they weigh probably about 80 pounds whenever you get all of them so moving those around is definitely not really a one-man job you're probably going to need two people or you may damage the blocks whenever you are moving them and if you are going to move them i recommend some sort of equipment in my case i got some bucket forks for my tractor so i could load a bundle on that get it up to the height that i want and then slide it off to say my main level or you can use a telehandler and that's probably the best case scenario that thing can get really really high and it can lift a whole lot of weight so you can do one or two bundles at a time if you're using that now before i ever actually started construction on my house i built a 3 300 square foot shop so that i could put building materials in i knew that these icf blocks were going to be huge now i left the basement ones outside because i knew i was going to use those in a pretty short period of time however the ones from my main level i needed a place to store those that was out of the sun so that was the main reason for building this big old shop now it probably took two-thirds of the shop and that stacked too high with these bundles so these things are huge keep that in mind if you're building your own home you're going to need some sort of extra space for storage now if you're a contractor this probably isn't a big deal for you you probably have a staging area where all of your icf is however if you're the homeowner building like i did you need a place to put this stuff when you're ordering your icf blocks remember that if you can get them at a home store you generally don't have them in stock so you're going to have to special order them or you're going to have to get them straight from the manufacturer so you're going to most likely be getting them one bundle at a time so make sure you get enough because if you don't they're going to have to be special order they're going to have to be trucked in and it's expensive and it takes time the third drawback to icf construction is you must measure and plan just perfectly remember once the concrete is in the walls and it has set there is no going back you're not going to move a window you're not going to move a door they're set they are where they are do it right the first time take a little extra time before you ever put concrete in that wall make sure everything is perfect also spend a lot of time thinking about the penetrations that go through the wall the things like the the gas line the water line the sewer line the electric line the sump pump the fresh air for your hvac the internet the phone i mean anything that has to go through the the walls it could be you know for a water spigot it could be electrical for a switch or something like that if it's small enough you can drill through the wall but if it's big you either have to core through it or you may just be out of luck number four icf walls are really thick so around your doors and windows you're most likely going to have custom trim also remember that square footage is determined from the outside of the walls to the outside of the walls so you're going to lose about a foot of thickness on each side you're actually going to lose square footage and you're going to be taxed on the total square footage of your house even though some of it is just the wall space number five the blocks could get sun damage during construction now you'll notice as construction goes on and your blocks are still uncovered so the drywall is not on them the siding is not on them whatever that is you'll notice a color change it goes from a very very bright white to kind of a pale yellowish color now this is just the very thin layer on the outside of the block being sun damaged it does not affect the structural integrity of the block so you don't have to worry about that but where it becomes a pain is it makes a really fine powder on the outside of the block unless you scrape or brush off this powder things like your waterproofing membrane or your flashing tape are not going to stick to the block so you either have to brush it off which is definitely something you want to do and there's a primer that they make that you can roll on to the outside of the block that makes things stick to it a heck of a lot better i definitely recommend that primer but it is a whole other procedure and expense that you have to go through before you can attach the tape or the waterproofing membrane the sixth drawback to icf construction is that you can't really run a lot of things within the walls themselves now typically i'm talking about the interior of the walls you have two and a half inches of foam so you have to be mindful of what runs within that two and a half inches for example your plumbing so you generally on those outer walls the icf side of the walls you're not going to want to put anything more than like an inch and a half pipe in you can run two inch pipe but remember that two inch pipe is two inches inside diameter the outer diameter is closer to two and a quarter inches and if you have any sort of couplings that join two pieces together or elbows or that sort of stuff that coupling can be two and a half inches to even sometimes a little bit greater which pushes your drywall out when you're initially designing your home try to think about what is going to be in those walls so if it's plumbing if it's electrical if it's cable whatever it is put as much of it in the interior walls as you possibly can the less that you have to put in the icf walls the fewer the channels that you actually have to cut out within the walls you don't have to get into the thickness issues where you may have to actually shim out your wall because you have something within it that is too thick you definitely don't want to put like a dryer vent on an outside wall make sure it's on an interior wall the last drawback i wanted to talk about with icf is actually the moisture in the walls so you have to remember you fill those walls with concrete and that concrete has a whole lot of water in it and that water has to escape somehow as that concrete cures and it's going to find those little crevices and cracks between those blocks to come out however it's going to do it really slowly so it's imperative in those early days to have dehumidifiers running even while you're in construction now i noticed within the first year of living in our house having the drywall in place having the siding in place that the humidity levels hovered around 60 percent and that is way too high not only for comfort but you run the risk of getting mold so dehumidifiers are terribly important make sure that you have one if not two running simultaneously at least through that first year i noticed as the second year went on the levels dropped considerably now it's more like 50 percent so i know that we're drawing some of that moisture out of those walls but again dehumidifiers super duper important another issue i noticed with the moisture was corrosion on the electrical components especially in the basement i had to take the outlets and switches out so that i could finish my basement and when i did that i noticed quite a bit of corrosion on the back sides of it anywhere that there is electrical or switches within those icf walls i would recommend them to be wet rated even though there are some drawbacks to icf the benefits far far outweigh any problems associated with it just go back re-watch this video and make any of the little adjustments and changes that i suggested throughout all the points that i made using this technology your house will be so much quieter your bills are going to be so much lower and you're going to build something that's going to last a really really long time and it's really just not going to rot from underneath you i hope this is helpful guys and if it was please hit that like button below it really helps with the youtube algorithm also subscribe for more great content like this i'll see you next time

Channel: Challenged

Views: 161,621

Keywords: Drawbacks to icf constrution, ICF construction, Problems with ICF, downfalls to icf, Garrett Glaser, Insulated Concrete Forms, Problems with Insulated concrete forms, drawbacks to Insulated concrete forms, new home build, building a home yourself, diy icf home build, diy icf, diy insulated concrete forms, building my dream home, drawbacks to icf blocks, problems with icf blocks, drawbacks to insulated concrete form blocks, downfalls of icf, downfalls of icf blocks

Id: DLFIR-0JjGQ

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020