ICF Costs in Dollars and Cents...

 Minimum cost for a stick wall these days will be about $6.00 per square foot and it goes as far as $10.00 per square foot depending on the model of the house and the contractor, not including vapor barrier, insulation, or house wrap, which is unnecessary for ICF.

As far as Insulated Concrete Forms are concerned, the costs break down is as follows: The most cost reasonable ICF I could buy was right at $20/block, or about $3.45/s.f., average was probably closer to $3.70, not including tax (90 and 45 degree corners are extra).

Now if you count one horizontal rebar/course, and one every 16" vertical (way over code) but typical around here, you are looking at just under 10 lin.ft. of rebar for every block, or about $4.00.

One cubic meter of concrete will fill between nine and twelve 6" core blocks.

At today’s prices about $140.00/cu.m. for concrete, or about $2.50/s.f. for 6" core.

Please note that this is wall material only, and doesn't include window or door bucks, bracing rental, concrete pump (this is not a cheap unit), and concrete vibrator rental, and this is all with free technical assistance. If you can do ICF walls for $12/s.f. DIY, you are doing very well.

The common misconception is that the bracing reinforces the wall to protect against blowouts, etc. This was probably true at one time (all ICF is so stout now that bracing is probably unnecessary to prevent blowouts as long as you don't use short pieces near the bottom of a lift), but now the bracing is so you end up with a straight plumb wall, and have a place to stand when pumping the concrete. If you have to rent scaffolding to fill the walls, you might as well rent ICF bracing as it is a lot easier to use. They claim the blocks are strong enough to frame your first floor, so you could use this as your first floor scaffolding.

You can buy block-loc that goes in the interior of ICF that serves the same purpose - it just doesn't work as well as bracing and it won't keep your walls straight.

Another apparent savings is time savings because the walls go up quickly when you are using big panels. This is another hollow benefit, as with stacking and gluing ICF block the walls go up very quickly. Yesterday, one guy on my subcontractor crew stacked 720 s.f. in the afternoon by himself. Please note that this is stacked, glued, and internal rebar only, we still need to put in window and door bucks, brace the window and door bucks, brace the walls, straighten and plumb the walls, build the walkway, pump the concrete, consolidate the concrete, etc. My entire basement stacked, glued, and with internal rebar went up in one day, with a crew of three experienced people. My point is that stacking block is very quick, it is the rest of the stuff that takes time.

The next question I would ask is how do you install the interior and exterior finish system? With a normal ICF, the webs are located every 6-8" and have good screw holding power (part of the reason they are so strong now). With the 12" widths, the metal studs serve this same purpose. The key is to look at the corners, how close is a metal piece to screw exterior finish in to? This looks like at least a couple of feet. This makes it difficult if you wish to install siding, and you must compensate for this.

I would stick with tried, true, and locally available. What happens if you underestimated and you need another pallet of block? If you purchase too much can you return it for a refund? If you run into a snag, how quickly can you get technical assistance? Since you are purchasing remotely, do you need to purchase your entire order at once? Can you phase your deliveries, or do you have enough storage space that this isn't an issue?

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