How To Build ICF Walls for below grade, crawl space or foundations

so today I'm going to show you how to put an ICF blocks on a last weekend poured the concrete footers normally you would just start do a slab and start filling room framing walls but in our case these three sides are below grade so they're kind of buried this place is buried in the hill and so these ICF blocks work great for that I don't want to frame walls below grade because you know over time those are gonna fail attempting to put in some all-weather wood but we did it the right way in this video I'm going to show you how we did it I've built a lot with these blocks and I built complete houses out of these blocks I've built foundations out of these blocks crawl spaces these blocks are very DIY friendly and anybody can do this really like using insulated concrete forms easy to use they're already insulated it's really quick and very economical to install you can see that our building that we're putting in right now it's below grade well what's better to put below grade concrete right you can use all-weather wood but all weather would you know might last 80 years or so but this right here this building will be standing long after that I've already put the footer in you can watch the video on that on how to install the footer don't screed the concrete crazy just you know screed it off nice and flat all you're looking for is just a nice flat surface within a quarter inch all the way around the building that helps you with the installation of your ICF blocks later that way you you start level you land level that you can see at chalk lines these are the building lines that we're building so we got 30 feet by 80 feet and this gives me a nice line to run my ICF blocks right along and that way I have a nice square building and works out great first thing you want to do when you stack your ICF blocks you want to start in the corner and you can see that my vertical rebar that I put in I measured when I put it into the concrete earlier so I knew that it was gonna fit in between my plastic tabs so you just got to plan that out when you pour your put it in your footer once your outside corners are set just work in Lord with your straight blocks we got that corner set and mike has been working this way with the ICF corner and then you see we have this chunk right here which is not you know block it fit in there we have to make so what's nice about these blocks is you'll set it here they'll figure out where this mark is you'll cut this block so you can make any size foundation work and it's that easy [Music] and then from now on when we build this wall we're gonna have a vertical scene that comes here and we're gonna put wood strapping that's strapped us here to here that keeps that in place so you got two patties blocks together and they make these things they're called HV clips okay and when you have your your forms that are here you just hook them on and on the first row and you snap in and that ties your blocks together this way so there's a certain placement schedule for these clips is right in the ICF block guidelines and for these we were using Fox blocks and we'll leave you a link to show you exactly where these go [Music] we got our blocks back three high for today there's a bunch of things you need to do before the pour I'll show you exactly what those are so we want to have spray foam around the blocks which is what you're supposed to do it actually holds the bottom in place and then I just went ahead and put this weatherproofing on ahead of time because we're gonna then actually come up with another piece of weather proofing right over top of this and then there will be that'll be your moisture barrier for keeping water on the outside of the building we don't have ICS on the front of the garage just on three sides so you need some way to end the ICF in the front so we put a two by six in the middle here and then we put a two by twelve on the outside treated and then this will give us a nailer to when we actually get the framing and sheathing on the outside after we pour we'll remove all these two by six trappings on the outside but then capsule stay in place and that gives me something an answer so here's our seam else placed up with the wood strapping that should be ready to go for concrete after the port will remove this wood strapping and it'll be done you'll have a nice wall in the back here we got some bracing in here and what this does is allows us at the end of the concrete pour with all the concrete's put in place then we can go ahead and lock the wall an 80-foot long wall so concrete in it so I mean if it goes one way or the other you know you want to correct that at the end and these will correct that once we get done with the pour we got this top flick that has to go on it's a treated piece of lumber and it goes right on top of the ICF this is what attaches your wall or your floor to as you build okay normally a lot of people just put their Jade bolts in and then they go ahead and mark in the market drill and then they put in the plates afterwards but we're gonna stall two by twelves right today so we put a sill seal on the bottom this is the concrete side these will go mount these will get mounted in the concrete will actually put them right on top set them in place and then all we have to do when the concrete sets is tighten the bolt we're ready to build so it's the little things like this they can save you a lot of time and money putting these top plates on wood takes several hours later on we'll get it done right now and then don't have to worry about it as so we're ready to go this concrete truck should be here shortly good this thing [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the point concrete into four-foot ICF's is pretty straightforward just right out of shoot put it inside the forms so once the concrete's in place then you vibrate the wall with a vibrator then you screed it off [Music] and then once you get all that done then just send a drop in the top plate [Music] [Music] Gessler the concrete pour really smoothly you can see everything's in place and we didn't have any blowouts or anything so what great till the last step you got to do we're gonna go ahead and square this up brace this wall if it's got to go in or out make sure it's plump and then as you can see the string on the outside that we have here we put a small block here so as you go down the string if the wall is bowing in or out it'll it'll affect the distance the string is off the wall so it's a very easy way to straighten up your wall just take a 1 by block stick it in here string line and I take my tape and I check it all the way down and then you have to push the wall in or out depending on what that string tells you these braces are just free-floating right here they're not doing anything yet but when we go ahead and take our measurement on our strength if we need to go in or out we then push the wall out or we pull it in and then we attach it to our concrete stake that holds the wall in place while the concrete sets the last step is you want to waterproof it all right yeah the low grade walls are done nice thing is I'll just be able to pull my concrete slab right inside so it gets us one step ahead ice chips are super easy as you can see didn't take us a bunch of time and how to get it done [Music] you guys blocks were using they're called Fox clocks they're pretty much an industry standard across the United States these are the ones we've used and used in the past they're very easy to use we're not sponsored by these I do like them because there's a lot of benefits to them they're universal they don't have to go in one way you can flip them over they go this way same with the corners you can flip them both ways which you have to oscillate in the corner but for the most part these blocks are very easy to work with they're marked so when you cut them you got lines to cut on and then they have these really nice wide tabs in here that 2 inch and a half which are basically your stud placements for when you do sheetrock later on and this is really nice to have something to screw do that's not thin these are actually inch and a half wide and then same in the corners the corners I believe are like 4 inches wide so they're the you can actually attach product on the outside of these blocks very easy so I'm happy to recommend these blocks are great and very easy to use and getaway friendly

Channel: Ana White

Views: 99,774

Rating: 4.9609237 out of 5

Keywords: anawhite, ana white, woodworking, build, wood, plans, project, howto, how to, how-to, diy, doityourself, do it yourself, do-it-yourself, easy, simple, 2x4, free plans, make, tutorial

Id: CtAQve5soY8

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2019