rzrgade
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Talk to Storm (Bob ) ,he knows his stuff,and would help you out.Plus he is close by.......................................
ICF concrete forms for house build.
- Thread starter fat tire
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Drywall returns on the windows make deep ledges look good but a lot of work. Wood foundation is ok but you have to go with concrete floor, a wood floor is a bad idea, plus the concrete floor helps the walls from pushing in. For a regular person, wood is a lot easier but if your capable of cribbing it I'd still go with concrete.
pete gads
Active VIP Member
Did my own basement walls on 1850sq ft and did frost walls down three feet in ground for 1200 sq ft attached garage for footings. By doing it myself and not having to frame frost walls insulating basement the cost came out same as if I payed someone to do a concrete basement wall and framing out basement. Then I also sprayed my extreir walls with 4.5 ins of urathypene in house and garage. Shop is same my heating bill for 55455 cubic feet or 4625 sq ft is 2050.00 for the year al at 21 degrees
Newer homes built R 2000 ratings have very minute breathablity, therefore like any house they need ventilation, newer and modern buildiing practices, if done properly can save you a lot of money in the long run, dont get me wrong if i were to build a house and turn around and flip it on the market in a couple of years no i wouldnt do ICF complete to the rafters, if i were building my own dream home were i planed on staying for quite some time, hell yeaz, energy costs arent ever going down but they are always going up. On one other note......... if your home is "breathing " from the inside out you have issues as thats what a vapour barrier is for, your heating and ventilation system does the rest, and if you want to go real fancy and high end get an air exchanger that replaces all the internal air in the house on a regular schedule, cant remember the number but i believe its every 3 hours. Another factor to keep in mind when building energy effecient homes is the direction in which they face the sun, and placement and size of windows, the last r 200o home i did was positioned on the lot incorrectly , and had an entire wall that was almost all glass...... Windows on cary a maximum r value of about 6-8, so the bigger they are the more energy loss.
another advantage of an ICF system is that its already insulated , and drywall can be attached right to the blocks, wiring the house is a snap if you have an electrician that knows what he /she is doing, a neat tool i saw a few years back was almost like a soldering gun with a wire loop on the end that heats up, you simply melt your wire runs right in and done.
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Concrete floors do not stop you walls from pushing in Cyle, think bout it for a sec, your wall is say 8 feet high and you pour a 6 inch slab at its base, how is that stopping the walls from pushing??? whats stops the walls from pushing in is being smart and not backfilling untill the main floor is put on, the keyway you install in the footing holds the concrete wall near its base to eliminate horizonal shear forces.
Thanks Neville, i am by far a carpenter that knows everything, however ive done ICF so many times i could do it blindfolded now lol
Many people believe that being their own general contractor is the most cost effective way to build a home. While financial savings MAY show up on the bottom line most people don't account for the hours and days and weeks that they absolutely must invest to insure they get a quality, completed home. In many large cities the agreement between land developers and builders preclude individuals from buying lots in subdivisions. You are basically required to use a builder if you want to live in one of these subdivisions. There are many financial, legal, timing and archetechural reasons for these agreements and the risk to land developers diminishes with a builder group. You mentioned the Lacombe area so I will assume an acreage or similar situation. The best advice I can give is to hire a reputable General Contractor that you trust and get along well with (you will spend a lot of time together). Fees vary but should run between 10 to 20 percent of the cost to build the house. For example a 200 000 home would cost between 20 and 40K, not small potatoes but not outrageous when this person is your eyes, ears, quality control, researcher, planner, garbage person, touch upper, small repair person, sounding board ect. The average build in a large city is 7 to 8 months, out of town typically runs a month or two longer, so even on the high side at 5 k per month, having that experience and expertise is worth it. Just knowing a good soils engineer can save a ton of headache and potential pitfalls down the road. Many people I know have started with a plan to build their home but become overwhelmed by the technical advancements and requirements, and the sheer time commitment it takes to do it right. Lots of employers get touchy about the constant trade phone calls, the "quick trips to my new home" and sluggish employees who have stayed up until 2 am cleaning out the house for the flooring guy. I am not suggesting you are not perfectly capable of doing it on your own, but most people don't consider what their time is worth, the strain it can put on the Missus and kids when you aren't there for 9 months or so and even your job. Quality General Contractors are worth every cent and are more cost effective than a builder.
Nailed that right on the button Max, and it s a very common thing that allot of people dont take into account, as a general you will find you spend the 9-10 hours a day working on the site, doing all the work that goes unseen. That 9-10 hours can easily jump up to 12 or more just answering the phone, making adjustments, calculations, and dealing with sub trades. Hell even with some of my smaller projects i find myself doing all the layout, assembly, ect... and having to do it while talking with suppliers at the same time.. Major PITA haha
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fat tire
Active VIP Member
Maby you might want to help me out on the build........... Let me get the final plans tweaked and the finishings addressed with the wife......I'll run it buy ya, thanks again.
- Thread starter
- #30
fat tire
Active VIP Member
Building with a builder has it's challenges as well......... Had to spend time policing the trades there too as the builder as the GC didn't do a great job and let allot of things slide..............if I weren't there most of the time on one build I would not have heat on my upper floor, as the trades did a hack job on the openings for the HVAC and the HVAC guys didn't seem to mind that the ducting was pinched to the point that there was a 70 percent reduction in volume...... Mentioned it to the site super, next thing I know I get a call saying to keep off the site because I was impeding the progress of the trades, so we agree that I can go in after hours or when there are no trades on site.......two days later the ducting was walled over and there was an inspectors package left there with a check list and a sticker sheet with basically everything signed off as completed and inspected as ok.........after seeing that I did a bit more checking, pulled the drywall and guess what, nothing fixed, just covered up, as well the sign off sheet with everything checked as complete.......... About 1/3 of the work was not even started let alone complete. I could go on but that's just one thing with only one of the properties that I went through while building with a builder.............. In my opinion, no builder or trade are perfect and the good ones will work with you with no issues..........nothing wrong with asking a question and getting an answer, keeps everyone honest.
Np fat tire, always glad to help out a fellow snow and mudder
It holds the bottom of the walls in. Think about it, for one was to come in, it has to push another out. Yes the floor doesn't come in until much later and after backfill, but it is a huge help. And I meant on wood foundation, as I said.....
If you are spending 10 hours a day for 9 months towards building a house, it better because you are physically building most of it. If you spend that much time JUST contracting it, until it's a 5 million dollar 10,000 sq/ft house you need better time management skills.
First off, the first month plus, there is VERY little to do, I mean if the framers take 2 weeks, you can go at the end and check everything over, unless they have problems you could not even be there the entire time. Cribbing, shingles, again very straightforward. Yes it gets a bit more when you get inside and checking out rough-ins can be time consuming.
Take out the time picking stuff out, because that time will be spent no matter what. The only extra time you spend contracting it yourself is getting estimates, scheduling trades and material, and signing off on trades work. Even if you build with a contractor your going to want to look over everything fairly close, same with a builder. I mean if you don't like where a light or whatever is, no matter what in the end your stuck with it.
I would rather let a crackhead do my build then 90% of these high production builders. They build garbage to put it nicely. When the finishing is a hack job you can be sure the stuff you can't see is 10x worse at least. I am scared to see how these homes are doing in 20-30 years. I know I won't live in my new house for more then a few years. I don't trust that it's not going to collapse seeing the way things are done.
Yes if you don't have SOLID construction knowledge and a LARGE amount of time to devout to a build for like 6-8 months then you are better off to find a general contractor, but I wouldn't go with a builder. If you can do some, you can even only have them help a bit to keep costs down.
Builders don't want people building themselves because it would make them do better work as a lot of self builders are 100x better quality, and they know how much money is in new home building. If you can afford a $200k lot you can find one in the city easily. But under that very hard, and any public lots are pricey but they do come up.
Plus the best part of doing it yourself or a contractor. You can have ANYTHING done ANYWAY you want it. No BS from the builder no you can't do that, or that's $10k extra for nothing, etc. The only decent builders are the smaller high end ones. Plus, YOU have the say if your happy with a trade, not happy no money. With a builder you will get told to bad. And yes, if your to much of a pain, the builder can tell you go fawk yourself and take the house back and sell it to someone else if they really want to. Read the fine print, legally not allowed on the property without THEIR permission with most builders. That's why I just bought a spec, not worth the hassle of building with them, they will pull the same BS regardless.
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I dunno, sure there is preserved wood foundations out there.......are they a good idea... fawk no, never ever have been, You will be hard pressed to find anyone now a days that even does them anymore. Not trying to sell the idea of ICF to anyone, as i dont really have to, the features and benefits of going that route speak for themselves, and from personal experience the pros far outway any cons to it, ICF technology has come a long way in the last 12 years. And for the record even with wood foundations the walls are still hilti'd into the footing, holding the walls the concrete floor helps yes, but whats that hold ?? basically 2 inches above your lower plate, nothing is going to stop the center of that wall from moving , the shear amount of pressure against a foundation wall is incredible, moist soils around the walls only intensify that effect, as do freeze thaw cycles.
A wood foundation is ok, i'd never do one myself but if done right are fine. But i'd NEVER use a wood floor. Out by my dads acerage, there is a builder who did 4 homes with wood foundations and screw piles, these are $700k homes to. If done right, there will not be any problems.
Maybe its just me then, but if i were dropping 700k into a home, i would literally shoot myself for even thinking of a wood foundation ... just saying, more so if i were a reputable builder i would be really asking myself wtf?? Guess when your spending 700 k on a house the 20- 30 k foundation is absurd and way over budget, wouldnt be able to have that 10k beer fridge ... lol
My guess is they did it for less weight, therefore needing less piles as the ground is pretty soft where the houses are at. They where putting in like 20 ft screw piles with a huge hoe. It was definatly not a cheap foundation. They are spec homes don't kid yourself ANY builder will do ANYTHING to save a penny. People don't care about a foundation, they want nice floors, a nice kitchen, etc......
Did they build it in a swamp?, ive heard of people doing this before dont get me wrong, personally I wouldnt myself, nor would i recommend it. I did a home about 3 years ago on the north side of Pigeon Lake, where we had very bad soil conditions, we drilled piles to 60 feet, and this wasnt a very big house at all maybe 1400 sq feet, with a 4 foot crawl space, still used an ICF on it lol. I wont say every builder will do anything to save a penny, not all of are like that, yes there are a bunch.... but consider why this is happening.... people wanting new homes dont want to even cover the cost of the materiels anymore, production framers coming in and framing for 6 bux a sq ft..... well my theory is this if your framing for 6 bux a sq foot , you get what you pay for, chitty craftmenship, and homes that barely meet code requirements, and further to this some inspector fresh outa high school with his notepad and dont even know what to look for. In fact just for chits and giggles heres a short story:
I had just finished my second year carpentry, and i mean fresh out of my exam and 2 days later was left to frame a 2.5 million dollar home at the lake, my boss at that time figured he would leave for a vacation to phoenix, and let me have at her, so i did, framed it all up , took me a while longer than a 10 year vetern framer, but it was framed. Inspector came in an older guy i had never met, and found one issue, i forgot to put fireblocking on 18 foot tall exterior wall. Quick fix took me bout 30 min, and passed inspection. I thought to myself wtf surely there has to be something else, after all im just a second year grunt really. But nope, all was good. Next home i did was very similar in having a wall that was 18 feet high and 40 feet long, learned my lesson the first time..... But i was curious at how well these inspectors really look into things, so i purposely left the blocking out of the wall prior to him coming..........this guy didnt say a word about it, but asked me to put up a temporary railing on a four foot step instead. Long story short , these guys building production homes have built up a buddy system with half of their inspectors in my opinion. Havent seen one yet that has ever checked a nailing requirement on a girder truss..... must be too much work to sneak up a ladder with that fancy pen and clipboard, hell i havent seen one that checks the attachment of a subfloor to TGI below it for that matter, im sure you could get away with a 1 inch roofing nail in each corner and they would be none the wiser.
Very close to a swamp, but these houses were out of it.
Inspectors are a joke. Didn't even call for a back fill inspection and got it in the mail that is passed, turns out inspector showed up as we were pouring the walls.....Were coming up to deadline so called for framing earlier, that way we'd get more time to finish it. It passed, roof wasn't even completely sheeted, no strapping or anything in. A complete joke. Electrical and framing were a tiny bit better but nothing great. In my opinion an electrical wire loose enough to droop about 6" is NOT acceptable, even if it has adeuate staple spacing. But inspector still passed it.....Biggest problem is inspectors aren't held liable for anything so they don't care.
Some higher end builders care, but the starter type home ones don't. If they can screw over people to save one dollar on a house they will and don't think for a second they don't think of ANYWAY possible to do it.
As far as framers framing for cheap, if they got that much to do my house it was WAY to much, whoever framed my house deserves to be paid NOTHING. Plus, I don't work like that, if I can't do it properly and make money on it I won't do it. Was a bunch of young guys who shouldn't be left to nail 2 2x4's together. The frost wall in the basement stud spacing ranges from 16-28", almost none are even within 1/2". They framed walls in halfs and they are off by stupid amounts, and they don't even know how to make a corner, but I guess that's why drywall is so loose in so many corners. And the upper floors show the same, no walls are even close. Some stub walls, the trim has up to 1/2" gap. The finishing sucks, but there is NO way to cover that garbage up. Ya it's a half stub wall and you see the gap underneath, but so easy just looking at the wall to tell how crooked it is. About 50% of inside corners are cracked....And guess why because there is no backing. Once I was putting on my shoes and leaned on a wall for balance I though I was going to go threw it, cracked the corner BADLY because it moved so much. Small walls like 4" or so because a door is most of it, vary like a inch because the walls are so bad.
It is downright sad. Even in the basement, the stuff open is pathetic to say the least. I am fighting with them through new home warranty SIXTY things they need to come back and fix......If that's not a joke I don't know what is.
I am honestly back and forth about suing my builder. In a way I want to, maybe things would change a bit but I can't say for sure. When I made a offer and told them their "garage pads" were garbage and wanted money back or I will buy elsewhere they gave me back $3500 towards it. Down the road after, still doing the same garbage. They even have to come back and redo my driveway on their own dime. But still using the same garbage trades.......Sad part is, since I do concrete for a living I told their site super how they could do 1000x better pad for the same cost easily, except they'd have to have strait walls, not be out by a 1", and vary in height by 2". I guess their attitude is if 1/50 people complain they are still more profitable doing garbage. This isn't a small builder either, probably in the top 5 biggest in edmonton atleast. Somehow though, they are ranked high in customer satisfaction, but I don't buy it, 100% of neighbors i've talked to say the same thing, they are garbage.
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