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What Is Insulated Concrete Form (ICF)?

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Coogle Homes is Marketed by Julia Braddy, Realtor, Montgomery Realtors Inc

Click here to view photos of an ICF home under construction
 

Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs) represent one of the fastest-growing sectors in the construction industry today. ICFs are hollow blocks or panels made of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) that a construction crew stacks to create the exterior walls of a residential or commercial building. Workers then add reinforcing steel and fill the gap between the two layers of foam with concrete. This combination of concrete, steel and foam creates a very strong and energy-efficient structure. After the concrete has hardened, the forms stay in place and become the insulation for the walls.

Insulated Concrete Forms, or ICF's, are stay in place forms used to build a superior concrete home. Benefits of building with ICF's include energy savings, fire resistance, superior structural integrity, and an ecologically sound building process, just to name a few. Once you have built ICF, or lived in an ICF home, you will undoubtedly never go back to the flimsiness of a stick framed house. The difference in quality is similar to the difference between Hoover Dam and a dam built by a beaver. And while the rumor of the highly priced concrete home persists the fact is that concrete homes are more than affordable - the energy savings that concrete home owners enjoy make the concrete home the more affordable home.

Within the last decade many homeowners, builders and architects have come to realize the superiority of the ICF home and the ICF boom is under full swing. By 2015, ICF homes are expected to make up 15-25% of all new homes built. More and more homeowners are looking for quality-built homes that will save on heating and cooling, and also withstand natural disasters. As the oil prices continue to rise, more and more homeowners are seeing that cheap, stick-framed homes are eating into their retirement funds, while the minimal cost to heat or cool an ICF home may afford the concrete home owner an entirely more comfortable standard of living. If you choose to build ICF, rest assured Coogle Homes LLC is here to support you all the way.

ICF wall during construction

An ICF wall acts as an energy reservoir that reduces temperature fluctuations and energy transfer. Because of their high thermal mass, ICF walls provide energy efficiency equivalent to a wood-frame wall of R-40, to as high as R-50, depending on your geographical location.
 

The Benefits ICFs:

  • Environmentally Friendly: Use of wood products in construction significantly reduced.
  • Energy-Efficient: Provides superior insulation, reducing heating/cooling costs and creating a virtual air/vapor barrier.
  • Sound-Suppressing: The interior rooms are effectively shielded from outside noise.
  • Extremely Strong: Walls are cast-in-place; monolithic, reinforced concrete.
  • Versatile: Any interior or exterior finish can be applied.
  • Fire-Retardant: Up to a four-hour Fire Resistive Rating.
  • Less Expensive: Reduced EPS molding and manufacturing costs.
  • Stronger: Superior strength during the crucial period of the concrete pour.

If you can imagine it, we can build it.
Coogle Homes can work with any plan you choose.

A common misperception is that concrete homes - ICF homes - must be built from home plans drawn specifically for ICF construction. In many cases, this is not true. Many ICF websites would have you to believe that you need home plans specifically drawn for ICF construction - the motivation for misleading you is in the fact that they are selling ICF home plans. Many ICF systems can easily adapt to dimensions that do not match the product dimension - similar to using 4' wide plywood and simply adjusting to fit the building dimension. Additionally, most builders can interpolate dimensions, and build so that interior dimensions of any plan remain as they were.

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