ICF foundation or full build
crazyone
14 years ago
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dcolilla
14 years agocrazyone
14 years agoRelated Discussions
Foundation walls using ICFs-how to estimate cost?
Comments (1)STAY AWAY from Superior Walls - they don't guarantee their product - and do you want a paper-thin sheet between you and water? ICF's price vary with the brand name, but you can negotiate a lower price. I'm building with an large addition with all ICF - but when I was planning I was considering SIPS (it was coming in much cheaper). The ICF guy negotiated with the manufacturer and got me a matching price. Have some guys out, tell them what you can get from someone else, and watch them scramble....See MoreICF build started - time-lapse videos
Comments (11)Thanks for the encouragement, all. I will post more as things develop, indeed. Today, those walls you saw at the end of the 3rd video were filled with concrete. Tomorrow the sub-slab plumbing gets roughed in and the ledgers for the Insul-deck will be placed. At the end of this week, the stamped-concrete floors and the concrete slab under the wood floors will be poured. Next week the deck goes on, then gets poured. After the back-fill it'll be time to build the 2nd (main) story walls. It's amazing how quickly everything's been moving, though the excavation took some time, since it's so rocky. Re: Av-mode: yes, since I get a meter feedback in manual mode, I could just use that to set shutter & f, which is actually what I do these days. But when one is getting started, and when one is used to shooting in Av or some more "automatic" mode, it's helpful. The main point is: once you're set, you want to be in manual mode so that you can keep the shutter/f the same, or essentially the same, all the way through the day. A $100 hunting camera sounds like a good idea. I don't know anything about them; I guess they have a manual mode and timer-shutter (or you can hook a remote release to them easily)? Do you have a brand/model recommendation, for this kind of work? Re: difficult settings in the woods: I wouldn't expect the settings to be too difficult - do you expect a lot of light variation or something, as the sun streams through between trees, perhaps? It might just come out looking like my moving-cloudy days, where the light flickers a bit, but the brain can tell that it's "normal". You'll want to set the exposure so that the brightest point isn't too over-exposed, but you can probably get that reading by going out on a bright day, at the sunniest point, and see what you get. Obviously if your variance is too great, you're right, it might just appear to "blink" - I suppose you could experiment with setting the camera in Av-mode and just setting the f, and letting it change shutter-speed every shot, to get a more "neutralized" lighting, but that might not result in a movie to your taste. Re: lot: yes, we love the view....See MoreHelp: Recommendations for full sun foundation plants
Comments (11)What Mad Gallica said. My beds are at a minimum of 5'-6' and some much deeper. The ones I started at 4' are now deeper - I had to go back and widen them. You want at least a foot of space to get in close to the building for any maintenance and to allow the building to dry rather than being damp all the time. Also, there is a rain shadow created by the building itself, and since you said that this area isn't easy to water, you will find it difficult to get anything to grow there. So if your bed is only 3' deep you have space for only one rather squashed row of plants which isn't as attractive as a deeper bed. Regardless, plan on running a hose there for the first year or hauling water by hand since pretty much anything benefits from water its first year. Planting this fall may make this less of a chore since they will have a chance to grow roots in warm soil, but with cooler air temperatures, so not as high a need for water as with spring plantings. If you can make one spot in front of the blank wall 8' deep, plant Quickfire Hydrangea paniculata. Mine grows in all day sun 12+ hours midsummer with no supplemental water after the first couple of years, and it blooms from late June-Early July until frost, starting white for a month and moving through various shades of pink to a deep pink around Labor Day, which it holds for the rest of the fall, so a full 4 months of bloom in my garden. Mine after 8 years is about 7' tall, but is only adding height slowly at this point. A few other tall plants with relatively small footprints that don't spread via roots are hollyhock (a biennial, so let it go to seed) and I have a tall, airy, lavender meadow rue (Thalictrum) blooming now which I no longer remember the name of. It also seeds some, but can be cut before the seeds ripen, or the seedlings are easily pulled. Both these grow for me in quite sunny spots that almost never get watered - maybe if we have a month without rain....See MoreRaising Foundation On New Build
Comments (67)So here we have full basements, almost always. The way many builders here deal with someone wanting “height” is making the basement level have higher ceilings, and instead of digging deeper, they frame higher. But 6’ off ground is considerable and I don’t see that working in this case! Best thing to do is to talk to contractors in your area to find out what is doable or not, and how it is done. As has been posted, in some areas such houses are built normally much higher off ground due to flood concerns, slopes, or just the style of the home (ie those old brownstones/townhomes). And it is okay to not build your house to be wheelchair accessible. As you can see, it raises many hackles here, because it seems there is an idea that everyone who ages ends up wheelchair bound or walker using 24/7 (not the experience in my own family) and if you don’t accomodate them or plan for yourself you are destined for failure, or is trapped if they break a leg (a young friend of mine living in a split level entry is dealing with a broken leg now in the same - her issue has not been moving about house and navigating stairs, but not being able to drive since she broke her “gas/braking leg”). My mum was able to take the stairs through chemo, surgery recovery, etc and later during palliative care right until a month or two before she died at 59 (she did need some assistance for a month or so before that after a pelvic fracture caused by the chemo) but then she was completely bedridden so stairs were a non issue anyway. My neighbor’s three houses down live in a four level back split.. They must have around 15 concrete stairs from street - I will count them tonight when I go home - to their “first level”. Not counting all the stairs inside between levels! They are in their 80s and still take those stairs and still live in that split. They still shovel the snow off those stairs. This to me very normal; around here even the “elderly” navigate stairs as stairs are in every home somewhere, even if just to the basement! I have a colleague who is building. a home for his disabled daughter and even their house will have *some* stairs. Aging in place takes many different forms. And aging in place can often quickly become impossible no matter how universally designed your home is. Multi floor homes are very popular here but elevators rare. I see elevators show up sometimes in the skinny multi level infills from the lower level garage up, but as said they are rare, even for very expensive homes. I have scoped out a place in my new home where a retrofit pneumatic vacuum elevator or through floor lift can fit if ever needed down road, but I am not getting an elevator now that needs annual servicing etc and would be rarely used on chance I need it in 5, 10, 20, 30+ years, and that I am still in this house when I do....See Morejimandanne_mi
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