sqwabb

Just off Cambie Street this afternoon, I think I may have seen the future -- at least of home construction: ICFs, or Insulating Concrete Forms -- Lego-like concrete forms made out of Styrofoam that becomes the insulation of the finished wall. ICF's are a 60-year-old technology gaining new popularity in earthquake-prone areas because the concrete walls produced by ICFs can be as much as 10-times stronger than traditional concrete walls formed with wood sheets.

Are they building a giant beer cooler?

Before this afternoon, I had never seen this stuff. The building site caught my eye from half a block away -- crisp white styrofoam. Not a sheet of plywood in sight. I wondered what I was seeing? I parked my bike and trailer against a house and bounded over to the worker closest to me.

The worker -- I didn't ask his name -- was happy to talk about the styrofoam stuff they were working with. He didn't mind me taking photos either, but his co-worker on the other end of the lot yelled something about pictures and money. A Hydro guy hooking up electricity only wanted $500 CDN even though I was pointing the camera away from him.

What I was looking at was a system of insulating concrete forms (ICF). The fellow telling me about it, explained that it wasn't new. He'd first worked with the system 20 years ago, when he was using a German product called "ConForm." He thought it was a German invention. Today he was working with a product called Fox Blocks.

He explained the basic system, but it was obvious: interlocking blocks which could be locked together to create the contiguous forms to hold the poured concrete. The "blocks" were actually two square sheets of Styrofoam connected together by plastic cross-pieces. The Styrofoam did double duty; it replaced the plywood and it remained a permanent part of the finished concrete wall, giving it an R22 insulation value. I could see other obvious benefits: no heavy lifting, and no power tools. One person could construct the foundation forms for this house using only a hand saw.



I asked how it compared, cost-wise, to traditional wooden forms. The worker gave the question some serious thought. He figured that all-in, this system would be cheaper. He couldn't explain why it wasn't more popular. He himself had only worked with it three times before. Yes, he said, it was usually used for foundations as with the home they were working on, but one of the projects he worked on, the ICF system was used to build an entire home -- octagonal shaped -- in Oregon.

How did he like working with ICF? He declared it was lots of fun, like "working with Lego bricks."

When I showed the photos to one of my McAcquaintances, they declared that  it was "old hat." The Wikipedia entry doesn't use that expression, but explains that it's a post Second World War European innovation. That was where I read about ICFs gaining traction in areas where building codes are beefed up to encourage more earthquake-resistant structures. So maybe I'll be seeing more of this in Vancouver. We're supposed to be getting one of those earthquakes any day now, aren't we? Click the images to enlarge them.