Mistakes We Made in Our ICF Home Build! Would we build with ICF again?

hello welcome to late lot build we have a special episode today today is going to be titled something like what we would do different [Music] we're not completely done with the build yet but there are already several things that we know we would have changed or we would have done a little bit different and i know when we were looking at building our icf home these are the kinds of videos that i looked for on youtube so hopefully this will be helpful for some of you that are planning to build either a conventional home or really helpful for one of you who for those of you who are looking to build an icf home so first up okay here we go um thinking about the light deck so we did light deck for our suspended garage floor pour we also used a product uh called light deck for our roof that's correct so here's what i have for light deck live deck has these metal uh joists if you would if you would underneath there and that's what you attach underneath there whether it be drywall or whatever it is on the underneath side of it now it is imperative that the light deck that those metal strips run parallel with each other and perfectly perpendicular to that wall and parallel to that wall because when you go back to put your drywall on in my occasion then if they are off it gets worse and worse and worse as you put those pieces of light deck on there now did it not get looked at when it was during the install did it move or twist a little bit or adjust itself when that concrete was it was put on there i don't know but if i were to do it again i would make sure to use wood furring just a simple two by four on its side um and that would make life a lot easier because it's about one and a half inches wide but if you can think the steel curves and it curves so you actually only have about an inch to catch that put that screw in and if you have two pieces that are that are butted up to each other that's almost impossible unless you're dead on and have to cut every single piece of drywall on the end and so most of them on multiple on both ends for it to line up perfectly and it was very cumbersome we had some viewers comment we have a couple of different videos where we're cutting out the styrofoam to run to run our electrical and some different things we had some viewers comment wouldn't it be easier to fur it out it would be it would have been it would have been you were all right and so if you use light deck in the future for out your ceilings please do because you had then becomes from one inch to three and a half inches and that makes a huge difference an absolute huge difference and you're going into uh into wood which you don't have to use the self-tapping you know drywall screws that go into metal stud so the other thing that we would have done differently with the light deck is with the roof we relied on the concrete finishers to create the slope on the roof just like you see in garages right in garage they usually create that slope in a garage floor we wanted them to create that slope on the roof well it wasn't perfect and we do have some ponding and pooling on the roof and so if we had either poured that front wall a little bit higher or had a slope built into the light deck we wouldn't have had to rely totally on the concrete finishers to get that slope right you know it was and and i can't remember back in that day if the concrete was getting hot and was setting up faster but it caused a problem it's a problem so if the light deck being laid perfectly flat if it was adjusted just a little bit you can still have the same thickness right or you know one side is thicker than that's what they chose is one side's thicker and then it gets thinner back down to the nominal size if i were to do it again i would have mandated more slope we will cross that bridge and we will get it figured out as you can see behind us there's going to be a rooftop deck on that baby and that view from up there is spectacular it's going to be awesome yep it's going to be awesome but if we had it all to do over again those are the things we'd change on the light deck yeah so the other thing that we did is that we had a company come out of springfield to do all the cutting and coring of our concrete block for all of our openings and what would we do differently john i wouldn't have done it it's that simple i believe in my design idea i believe in my layout of where i wanted everything and i was talked out of that we don't need to be we don't don't we'll just come back and we'll put a we'll record or we'll cut it uh the knockouts that i wanted to put in because i did put a couple of them in and they have worked perfect right the coring on the other hand not happy with not happy with it all because it created a enormous mess and it was expensive it was expensive we paid probably two thousand dollars to have the core coring and cutting come out which i had the layout done on the front end and i should have stuck to my guns and i should have just said no i'm going to use some pvc pipe or metal or you know even simple round duct work you know in roundness would have been strong enough that you wouldn't have a collapse in it and it would have worked and so and the reason i know is that that one right there for my exhaust for my uh for my exhaust vent that's what i used was simple uh um duct ducting it'll work perfect it works just fine work perfect so that's one that's another thing that we would have done differently um oh what about checking our rough opening so here's another thing and it's the old saying of uh you know check why and check twice and cut one yeah here's the deal that i that it was really frustrating to me was to check these rough opening sizes and what happened was is that we missed at least two of them uh and those were on our doors and so the person doing the layout and the person that was doing the building the left hand maybe not been talking to the right hand but you know in when they were stacking the blocks definitely could have been easily solved if somebody would have gone back and pulled a tape measure and said does a standard door fit in this or not to have a concrete saw in the house yeah yeah it's a mask it was absolute mess and that concrete saw of course operates on hydraulic fluid well when you change pieces and the hydraulic fluid leaks on the floor um it causes a mess it causes things that didn't have to happen right so check your rough openings that's right that's all i gotta say right there was there was cost that did not need to happen yes the other thing that we would have done differently is our design and this was completely on us we have no one to blame but ourselves but we made a four foot indention what i what would you call that yeah where the front door is that is at the front door so the front door is set back four feet and it's a six feet wide and sets back four feet well i took that set back and took it all the way down to the basement i could have taken that 24 square feet that goes you know floor to ceiling for the basement my staircase could have scooted over just a little bit more and that would have gained my access to under the stairs as of we just could not get an access to under the stairs because that bathroom and the shower are so close to them i couldn't get the layout for the toilet the vanities and the shower right to be able to get back under the stairs and so that is the only place in the house that i have unused space a new space to be fair the shower does sit under the stairs so we do have part of the area under the stairs that's used that's true that is true that is used but there is that slant that triangle there's probably 24 square feet oh probably that's not used that's not used and so what i would have done is that the wall would have been straight i would have created the knockout on the floor above right and then that's that's how we would have got around that space down below so a little design that i um i just missed it oh let's take a minute to talk about our window choice pellet windows uh not happy with them and the reason is it's not their function their function is great but a black pellet window and the series i want to say is a 250 series i believe it's not black vinyl it is white vinyl that is painted black and so i did not realize that until i found a scratch on the window when they were putting it in that it's white vinyl underneath there and so i was like you charged me more for black versus white and all you did was put a coat of paint on it and so not happy about that with pella and so with that being said i guess i can now paint the the window frame back black because it's been painted well who knows yeah i mean right hindsight's 20 20 that's why we have this video yeah that said i wouldn't have chosen a wood window no no definitely i would not have chosen wood no and that's why we didn't yeah we still wouldn't use wood windows maybe a fiberglass or a vinyl but i've had wood windows and uh just just not that big of a fan years later right they look pretty they look gorgeous though um and finally what we got the outside so icf has a uv lifetime issue so icf blocks should really not be exposed to uv light for more than six months the blocks get dusty they develop a kind of a film which is basically the styrofoam uh disintegrating i mean you know lack of a better term we did not get this house covered before the six months was up because of all of the supply chain issues so what would we have done to prevented some of that so my thought was if you might think that you might have a problem either it's a labor issue right you can't get guys get to get back maybe they've moved to a different project and your project has to sit for a little bit whatever it is that you might have a delay wrap your icf in some sort of house wrap whether it's tyvek or any of those other brands just to keep the sunlight off of it and the reason is it's not the styrofoam itself it is the the tape that you tape around the windows even if you clean all that dusty stuff off it still doesn't stick very well now fresh fresh styrofoam it sticks like i mean it's amazing it sticks so well so my thought would be whether you're rough opening on a window there go ahead once that is done once you have and it's all fresh go ahead and put a layer of that tape on there and then you can come back and put your window in if you have a delay and you can stick the tape to the tape versus the tape to dusty styrofoam yeah i hope you guys have enjoyed this video we have not these are these are the problems these are the things that we're now dealing with but really you know the more research you can do the more due diligence you can do the better that said every build has problems you've been on tons of builds they all have problems there's other questions would you build an icf again and my answer is 100 absolutely yes absolutely i would never want to build in traditional wood again after building with this agreed completely agree we have something that is so functional so insulated and so safe yes for the area that we live in when you're concerned about fires tornadoes you know wind storms we don't worry about any of that no nothing nothing like that no problems at all so i hope you guys liked it and please subscribe if you haven't already and if you've built a house will you put in the comments one of the problems that you had on your house build maybe it'll make us feel better thank you guys for being here today we'll see you soon i love you sweetie i love you [Music]

Channel: Lake Lot Build

Views: 94,049

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Id: 1DohHZC73Xc

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022