Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions costs

RWW,

This is a great discussion and everyone has made great points about costs. ICF stands for insulated concrete forms. There is a website www.icfweb.com and click on the link "Talk". It has a lot of information about this excellent method of building. I think it is a great alternative to SIPS for an owner/builder since you can do a good bit of the labor yourself and end up with a very energy efficient home. My home is designed to be 100% heated by hot water solar radiant floor heating. (I live in Northeast PA) I do have a back-up system (masonry heater). I wouldn't even consider doing my house with anything else but an ICF exterior shell. I learned about building with ICF on the above site and found a local distributor/ICF builder who let me help with a few of his projects and now I am fairly comfortable in doing a good bit of the labor. It of course will save me money. Labor costs on a home can easily make up 50% of the cost depending on the size of the home and type of construction. As I complete my project, I hope to document how much I have saved by doing the work myself. I have kept very meticulous records so far and am ready to do my first report on costs. I hope to have my shell done withing the next 2 months.

I will be happy to share that information with anyone after I have compiled it. Good luck on your project RWW and on yours, Thomas.

Haz

Haz,

I just got back from a "log home and timber frame" show in Lexington, KY. There was an ICF company/distributor there. After pouring my basement with 9 foot symons-panels, I can truly appreciate the elegance of ICFs now! Their system was truly amazing, and if I hadn't locked myself into SIPs with my foundation design, I would seriously consider ICFs for enclosing my timberframe now. They seem to me, better than SIPs for this purpose. No OSB - nothing to rot! You can paint stucco-like finish directly on the outer EPS shell and I can't see why it wouldn't last nearly forever. (with occasional reapplications of the textured paint)

SIPs might still have an edge though if you're trying to incorporate 8' wide windows or garage doors below a large expanse of wall. (although with a thick enough lintel and plenty of rebar, the ICFs could work there too)

In any case, I think your decision to enclose your frame with ICFs is brilliant. Please let us know how it turns out. I think the next structure I build (my garage?) will probably be ICFs with stone facing and timber frame trusses.

-Thomas

my timberframe house web page

Thanks everyone for the info. Haz, that ICF web sight looks like a gold mine of info. I'm deffinately going to look into this for my foundation and walls. I will be extremely excited to here how your experience goes with your enclosure.

Thomas, it's starting to make me sick watching you build your house thru your web sight!!! I just love it!!! your frame is beautiful and I love the cantilever But I'm having trouble getting any work done as a result of spending to much time reading these forums!

You are going to have some points where some beams will be coming thru from the inside of the house to the outside. How do you intend to aproach keeping these areas sealed and air tight over time as the timbers shrink. Thanks again, Kevin

Good question...

I didn't mention it on the web site yet, but the backside of the house (where that cantilevered room is) will be infilled. My posts and beams back there are 8x8 white oak. My braces are 6x8 white oak. (no sapwood) I will show everything on the outside, and probably everything but the braces on the inside. I know, I know, all of the timberframe books and companies recommend against this, but I wanted the look of one of those old English houses that juts out over the street. (no there's no street in my back yard!) Also, I just could not figure out any way to make the pendants and cantilever look right with 4" to 6" of SIP wrapped around it here and there. I'm hoping that the generous roof overhangs (2+ feet), and the cantilevered room itself should help shelter the infilled walls and timbers.

I figure if they can make a log house air tight (OK, so a lot of them aren't!), then I can wrestle with these shrinking timbers and get the infill air tight for that small part of my house. (those rooms with infill will contain a mud room, a pantry, a utility room, and a bath room, so drafts will not be the end of the world if they are unavoidable or if I get lax with the caulking in my older age.) I got some samples of the chinking they use for log homes - supposedly it will stretch 4x it's original size _and_ stick to wood. I'll give it a try. I also bought some marine caulk. I'll probably stick frame the infill, and then stucco the outside to get that English black-and-white house look. I'm not brave enough to go all the way and use traditional lath/wattle/daub/stone infill.

FWIW, we're sawing and notching timbers today. I started raising my house with about 405 of the 465(?) timbers done - notching the missing ones as we went. But now we're out of raw timbers so its back to the saw mill for a little while.

-Thomas

Thank you for all your advice and insights. We still have not decided whether to build with logs (again) or try a hybrid design or take the plunge and tackle the timber frame. Some concerns my husband has revolve around the efficiency of heating a timber frame home in the Yukon. With mobility being a possible issue for me in the future, my concern is avoiding stairs. I look forward to reading through this forum.

Hi Tanya
Noticed you're in the Yukon...I'm just a little south of you, in the Kootenays (southeast B.C.) You are welcome to give our company (Hamill Creek Timberwrights)a call, I'm sure the designers would be happy to give you a rough idea of the cost in CAN$ (don't worry, no preasure from us Kootenay folks!) 250-366-4320
I certainly hope (as I'm sure most on this forum do) that you opt for a timberframe if you have the opportunity to do so...
Good Luck!
*TG

Reviving this thread...

For those who are enclosing a timber frame wall with ICFs---do you mean building a full timber frame and then inserting ICFs between the timbers and filling with concrete, or just using the raw ICFs as insulative infill material?

We are planning a home on the northern California coast and have been warned away from using bales in our cool and humid climate (our relative humidity is normally around 85%, lots of fog). We plan to use Rastra at this point. ICFs in general are so strong when filled with concrete that we have decided not to use timber posts, as they would be superfluous and expensive, even though we have wood (doug fir) to use on-site. We do plan to use exposed timber beams for the 2nd floor, where we can see them, but we can't afford to "build two houses", as much as we would like to.

thanks

Jeff

You might want to look into Durisol Blocks. I have started looking into using them as a wall system for the first floor with a timber frame second floor and truss as you are suggesting. Info at http://www.durisolbuild.com/default.html. I am looking at them as an alternative to strawbale becuase they would go up fast, have no insulating foams to gas-off, no OSB and would avoid some of the issues of strawbale such as moisture and bank loan approval etc. The down side is the price. A 12 inch thick wall runs at $6.50 a square foot plus the cost of rebar and concrete. Such a wall should produce a breathable wall that still has a very good R-value. I have not had the time to delve very far into the product yet but I am watching the progression of a house being built this way in my area of southern Maine. If I learn enough from that project I will pass on more. If any one else out there has had experience with Durisol please let me know.