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Post date: Apr 26, 2015 6:02:20 PM
It is amazing how this light-weight, inexpensive material penetrates my life. Packing ‘peanuts’ were originally made of the stuff, but have been replaced by soluble organic ‘peanuts’ and inflated polyethylene bags. My house will have styrene insulation only in places where it cannot burn - underground.
Friday morning we started unloading the ICFs (Insulating Concrete Forms) from the trailer. Not much place to put them. No sooner had we started when another big pickup with another long equipment trailer arrived - only this trailer was loaded high with the foam insulation that will go under my concrete floor slab. It was supposed to be delivered next week, but by the time Eli called, it had left the distributor (at 6:30 am). So we placed the stacks of insulation among the trees (so it won’t blow away in the March winds) and started to place the ICFs on the footings that we cast three days before.
These (and all) ICFs are very clever - some slightly more clever than others. [We found out from the distributor that most brands are made in the same factory - just with different names and slight variations.]
We started by snapping chalk lines exactly on footings where the outside of the concrete (and the stud wall above) will lie. Then we place the corner blocks, which are shaped like ‘L’. These are glued down with spray foam insulation. We bent 56” pieces of rebar to fit into the corner - the longest we could insert around the corner and still allow 24” overlap with the straight pieces.Then lay straight pieces from the corners inward, cutting to fit where they meet and gluing together - although the interlocking notches on all sides means they fit very solidly without glue.
Inside the forms, which are 16” high, are plastic webs that keep the two insulating sides at the correct separation (10” in this case). These straps have notches that support and locate the horizontal rebar. All the rebar joints get tied together with wire.One row of ICF is not quite high enough for my foundation wall. The second row will need to be cut to fit: 10” on the outside (to top of slab) and 5” on the inside (more or less to bottom of slab, but just above the web). Thus one ICF can be cut into two pieces, both of which can be used to raise the form level.
Another horizontal rebar is laid on the upper web. Then we place the rebar that connects the foundation to the slab and tie all this together.
The foundation will be cast in two parts: partway up the ICF to hold everything together. Then we will prepare the sub-slab insulation, concrete block, and utilities. The slab and the remaining top of the foundation are cast as one piece.
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