Net Zero Homes and ICFs
July 8th, 2010 | Project Showcase, Unique Applications, Unique Trends
Net Zero Buildings
A net zero building is a building that offsets all energy use by creating energy as well so by the end of it all there is an energy use of net zero. Now frequently at trade shows or talking with people in general about the future of green building and the new way to build homes, I always cringe at the people who jump right into wanting to create energy without taking the necessarily steps to use less in the first place.
Net Zero homes usually have a setup, through solar or wind, to create energy to offset any they use. However, the concept makes use of the most important part of creating energy.
YOU HAVE TO USE LESS ENERGY.
icf
I can’t imagine the size of a wind turbine, and cost of a solar panel (about 285 sq feet at $16-$30 thousand dollars) to generate the amount of electricity that is needed to power an average (14,400 watt-hours per day) home. That’s why ICFs are an ideal building system for net zero, they will reduce energy needs.
ICFs and Net Zero
That’s why insulated concrete forms have always been a great option when our customers want to built a net zero home. They reduce your energy so the owner can create a surplus of it and actually sell it back to the energy company!
Here is our Hyde Park example below, one of the first net-zero homes in the country to use ICFs and a first in New York. General contractor Bill Reilly of Hyde Park, New York, became interested in ICFs in the early 1990’s, but he never went any further with it at that time. However, when he started planning to build an energy efficient home for himself, ICF construction came to mind again. As a contractor with 40 years of experience, Reilly wanted to build the house himself and make it extremely energy efficient.
New York Energy Efficiency
The result was the most energy efficient house in the state of New York. With a geothermal HVAC system and photovoltaic cells on the roof to generate electricity, Reilly pays nothing for electricity. Part of the reason is that he is able to re-sell the excess electricity he generates back to the utility company. But would never be able to do that had he not built with insulating concrete forms.
Quick Facts about the Hyde Park Net Zero home in New York
- One-story house with walkout basement
- 6,300 conditioned square feet
- 3,160 finished square feet
- HERS rating of 93.4 by Energy Star
- Highest Energy Star Rating to date in New York State
- Stone and vinyl exterior finish
- Asphalt shingle roof materials
- Climate Master Tranquility 27 geothermal heating and cooling system
- 70% smaller than it would have been with traditional construction
- Projected utility costs: Zero dollars
- 11″ iForm insulating concrete form
Sustainable Churchs Continued
November 6th, 2009 | Project Showcase, Unique Trends
As a follow-up to our first Sustainable Church post, Tom R was able to visit with a few more in his area. All of them thoroughly believed in the benefits of Reward insulating concrete forms and the green building initiatives of the churches.
Tim Miller, who GC’d the Portage Community Chapel in Portage, OH was kind enough to share information on this proejct. The Portage Community Chapel was an addition to an existing facility but the addition dwarfed the original structure. Included in the new portion of the building is a gymnasium, 2 stories of classrooms and all-purpose rooms, all of which utilized Reward for the exterior walls.
Miller is a member of the Portage Community Chapel, and one unique aspect of the church’s decision was the ability to use volunteers to help in the construction. Similar to Habitat for Humanity, Portage uses volunteers, usually church members, to help construct not only their own buildings, but to assist in the construction of other religious and/or non-profit facilities as well. Miller was able to train the volunteers to help in building this project with relative ease, mostly due to the simplicity of Reward’s system. In addition, Miller had a heat-loss audit performed for the building long before construction ever started, and the energy savings inherent with Reward’s products versus traditional methods made it an easy decision for the building committee.
It makes sense that churches would look at Insulating Concrete Form construction. Churches have been and continue to be anchors in communities across the US, and as such, when they look to build they want their structures to last for generations of the congregation. ICF technology helps them do that.
Most churches and church building committees work on very tight budgets so they want the most bang for their buck. Again, Reward ICF’s help them achieve that with competitive first costs and ongoing contributions through reduced energy requirements throughout the life of the building (which is longer when built with Reward versus traditional construction methods.) When you add it all up, it’s easy to see why Reward is often the choice for new church construction.
The New Standard of Sustainability. Tell the World.
Greenbuild Conference and Expo- 2 weeks away
October 29th, 2009 | Marketing, Unique Trends
We are about 2 weeks away from the GreenBuild Expo in Phoenix, AZ. This is one of the largest, most influential green shows out there, and we definitely wanted to be a part of it, as this industry is about to explode. Pete H, from Colorado, and I will be working our show booth and hopefully meeting some customers, builders, and industry professionals who are ready to commit to building sustainable structures. We are looking forward to meeting folks who understand the solution to of our country’s energy issues starts with REDUCING ENERGY CONSUMPTION.
If you are planning on going please stop by our booth (4422) and say “hi”. If you still haven’t registered, contact us directly and I can get you some free conference passes! All I need is your name, your title, and an email address.
I personally don’t get out to too many shows other than World of Concrete so I’m pretty excited for this particular one.
My goal is to try to bring a little of the show back to you, with DAILY blog posts “From the Show Floor.” I want to focus on any interesting people, products, or brief recaps of what the overall vibe is of people coming by our booth.
So Quick recap:
-GreenBuild Expo November 11-13th Phoenix, AZ
-Reward Wall Systems Booth 4422
-Call Us at 1-800-468-6344 if you want free passes to Show
-Daily Blog Updates “From the Show Floor”
Green building
With insulating concrete forms
Sustainable Churchs with Insulating Concrete Forms
October 27th, 2009 | From the Field, Project Showcase, Unique Trends
One market where ICFs have had significant activity recently is in the construction of new churches and religious buildings. In a particular market area, we have 5 projects currently under construction and a number of others in the works. As of this writing, The Hopevale Church in Michigan, the New Beginnings United Methodist Church in New York, the Portage Community Chapel in Ohio, the Manheim Brethren In Christ (BIC) Church in Pennsylvania and the Celebrate Life church in Lancaster, PA have all started projects using Reward. Tom R, our regional sales manager, began to wonder why so many of these church building committees were turning to Reward insulating concrete forms for their projects and he got some excellent insights from a few committee members.
Tom spoke with Ed Denlinger who sits on the building committee for the Manheim BIC. Manheim had built its Youth Center last year using Reward and currently has its new Sanctuary under construction, also with Reward. Denlinger said that the main reasons they decided to go with Reward are competitive first costs, energy savings, sound attenuation and building strength.
“We are going to be here for a while,” Denlinger says. “When we evaluated the costs of Reward versus traditional CMU cavity wall with added insulation, cost in essence became a non-factor. With continuing increases in energy costs, the performance of the building became key and it was a no-brainer.”
The building sits close to the street in a commercial area, so keeping the sounds of the church activities inside and the noise of the nearby street out were also added benefits.
Finally, Denlinger noted that finishing the building has been a simple process because they weren’t limited in terms of what they could use. Drywall application on the interior is easy and whether it’s a brick or an acrylic finish, it didn’t matter because both work well with Reward ICFs.
The sustainability of ICFs shows immense potential for the religious building markets. Churches from hundreds of years ago are still standing tall, as they should be intended to- granted they took intense manual labor and YEARS to build (between 8-22 years in some instances). But now with uses of concrete in ICFs these structures will still be standing, and they have the flexibility to be designed with any old world architectural inspirations or new age trends as well. Either way it will house a congregational community for a lifetime.
We’ll update this project as it finishes up!
The New Standard for Sustainability. Tell the World.
BIM Design with Reward Insulated Concrete Forms
July 9th, 2009 | Unique Trends
From paper and pencil to AutoCAD to BIM, this is the evolution of building design community. BIM (Building Information Modeling) is quickly becoming the design tool of choice. The building is designed in 3D and is a virtual design. Not only is BIM useful for creating drawings of the building and its components, but also for embedding information, simulation and visualization of the building. That is the core difference: “I” stands for “Information.”
While there are a few different software packages that can design to BIM, Revit is by far the leading software available for designing parametric BIM objects. All the building components, from the steel supports to the windows units to the grain of the wood trim, are drawn using Revit software. Also you can place cranes and pumps in the drawing when coordinating work schedules etc. Once the BIM objects are created, building plans and drawings are quickly and efficiently drawn. And of COURSE our wall sections and insulating concrete forms are now part of the BIM world! (Product Manual Login required)
For walls designed with BIM, a wall segment is an object whose length, height, thickness, location, orientation, and material composition are included in the model, and have repeating details, so you can take and drag the wall the length you need, and will collate all the information automatically. It is also easy to conduct take-offs with BIM.
The companies that have embraced BIM have benefited in the design, construction and operation of the project. BIM is an integrated design solution. BIM integrates the building components in 3D along with associated data.
Each BIM object can have data attributed to it. By having the data for each building component at the finger tips of the designer, it saves them valuable research time. Examples of this may include R-value, CSI specifications, LEED information, costing data, and design notes.
The ideal situation is to have both the design (architect and structural engineer) and construction entities using BIM. If the companies are able to accurately control costs, quality and schedule, they can use their resources more effectively.
Some use the term designing to 4D with BIM. The 4D element is time –the length of time of construction process – including the sequence and timeliness of each element of the building. For example, if a building design had duct work designed in a certain location that would interfere with another building component, BIM would avoid the time and expense by having to re-construct something to make the duct-work work. Instead this issue could be found prior to construction.
Some jurisdictions are starting to require BIM design for their building projects. A couple examples include the state of Wisconsin and GSA.
BIM is new to us and our industry, which is why we were first in offering our products as. BIM models. We are continuing to learn about the technology and especially how it applies to making buildings energy efficient and more sustainable.
Take advantage of and access Reward’s free parametric ICF BIM objects
Reward Wall Systems has prepared and provided BIM objects in Revit. By providing the objects to the architect or designer, it saves them valuable design time as the wall sections and product details are already drawn. The designer can then just choose which wall section or product detail and begin creating plan, elevation and detail section drawings of the building.
Along with the objects, data associated with the Reward ICF wall is made available with each object…obviously or it wouldn’t be Building INFORMATION Modeling, it would be just Building Modeling.
The Reward BIM Revit objects can be found at the following locations.
- Reward BIM Object Library > Will have to register or sign in to view
- SmartBIM Library
- SmartBuilding Index
- Autodesk Seek
The New Standard of Sustainability. Tell the World.
Welcome to aBlog By Reward
June 16th, 2009 | Common Troubleshooting, From the Field, Lets Get Technical!, Product Announcement, Project Showcase, Unique Applications, Unique Trends
Welcome everyone to the first post on aBlog by Reward…get it? It’s “a” “blog” but it’s branded as aBlog, like our insulating concrete form products iForm®, eForm®, etc. Never mind. A few things I would like to do for the inaugural post is to introduce myself as the official poster, I’m Troy.
I will be posting information from our corporate offices from our President, CEO, VP, Technical Specialists, Regional Sales Managers, and Marketing to showcase a little bit of everything we are doing, talk about some trends in the Insulating Concrete Form (ICF) industry and pass along some information and things we learn everyday while visiting our customers and greening North America 5.33 sq feet at a time.
My goal for this blog is to try to connect with people on another platform and maybe start a discussion, teach something new, or even be taught something new in the process. Our tone is casual, and my jokes are horrible, however we have to keep the flavor light or this endeavor won’t be as FUN as anticipated. This is not a discussion forum, with freedom to post abusive language or spam, as all comments will be moderated. And for the legal jargon: Reward Wall Systems Inc reserves the right to control and edit all postings. Furthermore all content written by Reward is all rights reserved 2009. By posting pictures, words, or content, you are verifying that you have permission to do so.
Also if you need in depth questions immediately answered, the best way to reach us is through our customer service department, not through aBlog. 1-800-468-6344
On to the topics.
There will be 6 major topics we will try to schedule routinely in order to cover as wide of a range as possible. Don’t see something that you think we should focus on more? Tell me please, just add a smiley face at the end of your sentence. :-)
From the Field
Common Trouble Shooting
Let’s get Technical!
Project Showcase
Unique Trends and Applications
Other
So we hope you find aBlog by Reward useful and informative and just a smidge bit entertaining. Feel free to comment, post follow-ups or even additional resources on a topic. There may be aBlog related contests and EXCLUSIVE information given out first to the community via aBlog throughout the year so be sure to come back often. We’ll talk to you soon.
Thanks and tell the world