ICFs and Cold Weather Concrete Part IV
December 15th, 2009 | From the Field, Lets Get Technical! | CMU construction, cold weather concreting, educational, K-12
Here is our final post, for now, on insulating concrete forms and cold weather concreting. This is a testament from our regional sales manager, Thad. The pictures and story was described from a Colorado school job site in November, where insulating concrete forms were used as the exterior shell of the building and CMU blocks were used for the restroom areas. These notes and the pictures show a real life scenario of the benefits of ICFs.
Three observations of using ICFs and CMU
Thad points out three huge observations that communicate cold weather benefits of insulated concrete forms in relation to CMU.
- The General Contractor has to pay for any cold weather material that is used for CMU construction- including heaters, plastic tenting, blankets etc . If it is windy they will have to repair all of those elements as they whip around and become damaged due to the weather. The GC spends more money in order to continue to keep the job on schedule and for safety of the workers. The tent is heated so that they can grout the walls, which ICFs no grout is needed so tenting is eliminated.
- The mason contractor can bid both ICF and CMU packages.
- The masonry workers had to shut down the day Thad was there because it was too cold and the tent was destroyed throughout the day by high winds. Generally the crew would have to be sent home and a day of work is wasted. The ICF portion of the building was not effected by the cold or the wind and construction was still moving forward.
For more information on cold weather and concrete see our previous posts or access our insulating concrete form product manual where you can see all of the research and testing done on our product lines:
Insulating Concrete Forms and Cold Weather Concrete Part I
Insulating Concrete Forms and Cold Weather Concrete Part II
Insulating Concrete Forms and Cold Weather Concrete Part III
