ICFs and Concrete

[Pat]

Neat project! Congrats! I like the ARXX blocks but the nearest source is a ways away from me and no one near by uses them. I will be using Polysteel brand which fairly recently added another style block to their lineup. It is 13 inches wide over all and 2 ft tall by 4 ft long. Concrete is 8 inches thick with NO waffle grid and NO post and beam, just 8 inches of crete. It has steel "nailers" on 6 inch centers recessed 1/2 inch below surface.

I reproportioned my master suite to acomodate an integral number of blocks to reduce waste. It is 31x35 OD now.

Are you using any of the PanelDeck/LightDeck/whatever horizontal analogs to ICF for any ceilings or floors? I'm using PanelDeck for the basement ceiling which gives me a floor for the space above. I found out about the new block too late to use in basement which poured 2 days ago so cast the walkout basement walls in place (12 inches thick with 9 ft ceilings).

I'm just the reverse of you... You have 1 buried wall and three walls with windows in your "basement." I have 3 buried walls and one window wall.

We put a tad over 50 yds of 4000 PSI crete in the basement walls. The header beam over the window/door opening (16 ft wide) got 5 pieces of #8 (1 inch) rebar in the bottom and a couple #5 (5/8 inch dia ) higher up. The beam is 23 inches tall and 12 inches thick.

Keep us up to date with your project, it is quite interesting.

Pat

[GaryM]

Sounds like a great Master Suite. I guess you're including the bath and perhaps a dressing room or walk in closet in those dimensions. At least I hope so!

We are not using any of the horizontal stuff you mention. The floor joists are trusses with lots of room for services to run through. It's too late now, but if you have a URL, post it so I can learn. Stitt Energy usually builds a research house every year and tries new products. If they like the results, they then offer the new products to their customers.

Tomorrow we are going to mark locations for floor electrical outlets so that the rough-in can be done before the floor slab is poured. Perhaps by the end of next week we'll be able to start putting up walls.

[GaryM]

Pat, i should have read your post before responding! I looked at the horizontal units and it look neat. Would make a great ceiling for the safe room!

At this point it's too late for us to use as there was not enough room allowed. We cut the budget a little, hope we don't regret it later, and are skimping on the saferoom ceiling. It's not going to meet FEMA specs. Can't have everything I guess.

[Pat]

Gary,
I meant to imply by "suite" more than just a bedrom. BOY that would be a B E D R O O M! Ya, it is bedroom, bathroom, sitting room, and his and her WIC. Bath has 5 ft Jacuzzi tub and a doorless shower. The "block" walls on all four sides of the master suite are 13 inches thick before sheetrock in the interior and veneer on the outside (brick-stone-vinyl).

In the floor plan the wall between the great room and the master suite is shown thinner than 13 inches. This is either a shortcoming of the cad application or a lack of ability on my part to make it behave. The interior walls of the sitting room are correctly shown at 13 inches (Pollysteel ICF with plain flat wall design). It is simpler to just go ahead and do them like the rest since I will be using them to support a cast concrete ceiling.

The entire master suite, less the sitting room with its French doors and windows, is a safe room. The two bedroom doors leading out of the space are FEMA doors with a lockset AND three deadbolts. If I decide to put any windows in the bedroom and or bath, there will be interior steel storm shutters of massive strength. I have done that for the guest bedroom/saferoom in the basement.

There is a small propane gas log in the upper right corner of the sitting room. Luckily we usually don't have simultaneous cold weather, power outages, and tornados so in case of a power outage in cold weather we can heat the bedroom with the sitting room's gas log and not compromise safety. I may run a duct with a small quiet, I mean, Q U I E T fan to circulate warm air into the bedroom from the sitting room. I have some solar electricity and batts for storage so a small draw like an efficient fan will not pose a problem.

I'm not quite approaching the max number of house building balls I can simultaneously juggle yet but I can see it happening later when several parrallel processes are running.

Best of luck to you with your adventure,

Pat

[Pat]

Gary, I guess the good news is that the ceiling could be less important than the walls since the greatest damage is from wind tossed debris. Of course I saw the 18 wheeler in the movie "Twister" before I built my mom's safe room. I made her saferoom ceiling 14-16 inches with two rebar mats one atop the other 5 1/2 inches apart with rebar on 8 inch centers.

Pat

[GaryM]

I think we have the same door. As you said 3 deadbolts and a lockset! Nice heavy steel. And held in place with poured concrete. We almost forgot to brace the frame when the concrete was poured. The frame was squeezing in against the door. If we hadn't caught it in time we might not have been able to open it up. That would have been a problem!

You mentioned shutters. Have you ever seen the roll shutters popular in Germany. They roll over the window on the outside, but are operated from the inside.

[egon]

Pat:
Welcome back!

Critical path method to juggle all the balls.

Egon

[Pat]

GaryM, Could be the same brand door. I read the DO NOT REMOVE THIS STICKER sticker but forget the mfg name. There are several mfg of these doors. We installed the frame without the door. We insured it was square=, plumb, and true and braced and secured the devil out of it. We installeld 3/4 inch forms over the frame inside and out and put snap ties through the opening. We used sheet metal screws through the form into the door frame. It did not budge during pouring/vibrating.

My previouls experience with this operation was a near disaster. the frame was braced pretty good but not good enough. I ended up sawing the door in half lengthwise, sectioning out a thin triangle slice and reassembling the door with overlaping patches for both sides. I pop riveted the patches in place then rehung the door to check the fit. It was perfect so I welded the seams 100% and added 2"x2" angle to the top, bottom and two intermediate positions horizontally on the inside and outside and through bolted them in place. As this is a safe room door from garage to safe room, I didn't have to worry too much over cosmetics. I did use some Bondo and painted the door. Not too bad. Lesson learrned: Make absolutely sure that the frame is secure. If I were to pour one with the door hung in place I would close the door with some stout shimming material in it slammed shut in the door on the deadbolt side. maybe a piece of sheet metal with wax paper on both sides. You could attach vise grips or something like that to it to pull it out if got pinched. That would guarantee that the frame couldn't contact the door.

Alternatively you could cut wood shims slightly undersized and soak them in water to swell them up. THey would dry and shrink making them easy to remove. If the frame didn't move, no harm done.

Pat

[Pat]

Egon, The CPM (Critical Path Method)... Ahhhh the power of CHEESE oops I mean PERT charts. Back about 1990 when I was an adjunct prof teaching software engineering and senior projects classes to comp sci seniors in evening classes after work, one year project management software (CPM - PERT chart stuff was the senior project to be done in teams of 5.) Critical path, parallel vs serial tasks, slack time... stuff to live by...

Actually, if more people understood the concepts, not really very complicated (business majors do this stuff, insult intended) life would be more rational for many of us. I have met precious few contractors who have a clue about CPM or PERT charts but they all could profit greatly from a working knowledge of these concepts. Sure, some sort of kinda use part of the basic concepts and think they invented it themselves. In general, small outfits are clueless regarding these powerful organizing and controlling concepts.

Pat

[Pat]

GaryM, OOPS, I forgot to coment on the shutters. There are several shutters coming out of Florida. They are designed for hurricane protection. Some are plastic, some are aluminum (hollow and foam filled) All mount outside and operate from inside. Some are electric with manual override and some just manual. Hurricanes don't generate the wind velocities or throw the heavier debris associated with F-4 and F-5 tornados. The shutters are good stuff for Florida and other hurricane targets.

I like the way they can be installed in new construction so as to not be an eyesore. They would protect the window glass in certain tornado situations but are not cost effective.

In general my desire for protection is not centered on protecting the glass from 100MPH winds and light debris but is in protecting the occupants from 100MPH studs and cinder blocks (not found in hurricanes).

I talked with some of the manufacturers and they recognize the shortcomings of their products as relates to tornado damage. These shutters would lessen the damage from smaller tornados but again, my situation is different from what their product is intended to handle.

Their are locations that have to board their windows frequently or lose them to hurricanes. These shutters can be very cost effective in that environment. I live essentially at ground zero of tornado alley. The probability of a home in my arrea being significantly damaged by a tornado (losing windows and more) is on the order of once in 4000 years. Buying shutters to protect against losing windows every 4000 years is not cost effective. Shutters capable of saving human life, should today or tomorrow be THE DAY the once in 4000 year event happens are worth my effort to design, fabricate, and install. Even though, for convenience of use, I install them on the inside and risk losing a window every 4000 years, if we are hit by a tornado, my wife, my guests, and I will survive to pick up the broken glass trapped on the window sills behind the shutters and to mop up any water that blew in on the carpeted slab floors.

More directly to your question: No, I haven't seen the German shutters. Have you a reference or any contact info to share so I can check them out?

I went through a brief period where I thought I might put shutters on the outside in addition to the inside and have them operable from the inside but it required more Rube Goldberg engineering than even I would accept. I could do it, I just thought there wasn't enough justification. There will be a roof over the basement patio (porch slab floor above) that extends out from the walkout wall for 14 feet. reducing the likelyhood of losing a basement window to debris. I suppose I could engineer that deck so that if it is lifted strongly enough the support columns will fail and let the raised concrete deck bend the attaching rebar and fall down at an angle still attached to the house covering the walkout window wall and bedroom window as a lean to.

Pat