A few months ago we met a group of architects and designers that attended our Green Building Enclosure Design Conference in Minnesota, and since then asked us to host the Iowa Chapter American Institute of Building Design monthly education seminar. So we set up shop upstairs in our office and were able to give our two newest presentations, hands on product demos, and they were able to meet our engineer (Kelvin D), our product application specialist (Darryl U), and our architectural presenter (John O).

New Advanced Insulated Concrete Form Education

These are the two other presentations we gave them, all which go deeper into specifically designing with insulated concrete forms and the science to WHY building with ICFs improves a building’s performance.

Design and Construction using Insulating Concrete Forms (ICF)

Summary: Attendee with become familiar with the basic concepts of using ICFs in the construction and design of a building, including installation techniques, structural performance comparisons, and explaining common details in regards to connections, penetrations, utilizes, finishes and waterproofing. AIA: 1 HSW and SD

Building Performance with Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF)

Summary: Attendee will learn how the inclusion of ICFs affects the performance of a facility, with an emphasis on thermal and moisture issues. Topics will cover air quality and condensation principles of ICFs versus traditional construction, introductions on specific energy modeling tools and familiarization of how finishes can affect the performance and life cycle costs of the facility. AIA: 1 HSW and SD

New ICF Professionals

After a couple hours in our office the Iowa chapter of the AIBD is now more familiar with ICF, how to design with them and how to better incorporate them in their current designs. If you and your firms would like to be educated in how to expands your expertise and being able to confidently offer your clients the access to insulating concrete forms call us and lets get it scheduled.

If you are looking more for an intro course to ICFs find our basic course online for free at AEC Daily.

The annual ICF Builder awards were announced January 18th at the World of Concrete. I, personally, have only been in this industry for a little over two years, with this year being the 3rd for the ICF Builder awards, and each year the projects set the bar for ANY type of construction, not just ICF. This year Reward Wall Systems were represented in a total of 5 finalists, including 3 that won an award for their respective category.

The ICF Builder Award Winners Are…

Reward Wall Systems was represented in 3 award winning projects in the Multi-Family, Custom Home, and Large Commercial divisions, all receiving the first runner up award.

Multi-Family Housing- Oak Haven Development

This is a hurricane Katrina rebuild of 80 low income housing units. With the size, scope and long term impact this project would have in the region, this could (should) have easily have been the top award winner. Read the past blog post on this game changing ICF project.

Residential Housing- Park-Raines Residence

Photography by Robert Harris

This unique modern designed home was built in the middle of urban Chicago in a revitalization of a old/historic neighborhood. Featured geothermal heating ad recycled paper as an exterior facade, this project earned local accolades and is arguably the GREENEST home in Chicago. View past blog post on this sustainable Chicago home for further information.

Large Commercial- Alamosa School District K-5

Two schools were built on the same campus, one for K-2 and the other 3-5. Total square feet totaled over 140,000 for both schools, with were identical in design. With large spanning windows and P/V units on roofs this project was well deserving of the award it received. Read previous post on  high-performance schools.

Congratulations to all building team members involved on the winning projects and to the project teams for the Passive House in the Woods and the Bellaire, TX Residence as well for being finalists.

Carleton College is up for the 2010 annual Greensite awards in the Institutional category. We have blogged numerous times on this project, its sustainable properties and the efforts of the college to to receive a LEED Gold certification. So along with an ICFA, ICF Builder, and Minnesota ARM award, this project wants YOUR votes so we can add to its trophy case!

(Catch up on this ICF dormitory)

To read about the Greensite awards and to view Carleton College entry go to the official Greensite page.

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To skip reading over everything, and just trust us that this is the best project of the bunch just go ahead…

VOTE for Carleton College

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ICF Construction and Design Team

Owner: Pegasus Group/Carleton College
Architect: LHB
General Contractor: J.E. Dunn Construction
ICF Installer: Northland Concrete and Masonry
ICF Distributor: Cemstone

Some Cool ICF Pictures

The picture above shows a sunny, however frigid day in Minnesota. If you have been up there in the winter months you know it can get pretty serious. But with the dorms needing to be ready for fall semester they worked through the winter in sub freezing temperatures. Many days hit below zero, but luckily ICFs allow for concrete placement and curing with sub freezing temperatures.

This picture below is a meat thermometer(highly sophisticated measurement) stuck in an ICF and the concrete after placement. It shows what the curing temperature is of the concrete…100 degrees. The outside air temperature was under 20 degrees.

Finished Insulating Concrete Form School

Please enjoy the pictures of this awarding winning school.

As the year goes on and hopefully this projects racks up a couple more awards and we’ll post some updates on the continual energy use and any more ambitions from that campus.

ICF Project Statistics

• Location: Northfield, Minn.
• Type: MultiFamily—Two Student Residence Halls
• Size: 91,536 sq. ft. (floor) 52,150 + 39,376
• ICF Use: 63,840 sq. ft. (walls)
• Height: 4 stories plus gables
• Cost: $26 million (budgeted)

Live Energy Use Data

One of the unique features of the project is that there are energy use monitors installed in the Residence Halls. This allows the school to track energy use per building, per floor, and for each individual dorm rooms as well. They can identify energy hogs, and maybe advise heavy energy offenders how to cut energy use as well. This is a huge advantage when educating responsible behaviors to students and getting them thinking about the cost of energy.

Along with energy use monitors, they also have the ability to track the energy creation through photo-voltaics and steam generation as well. Those systems were put in place to help heat the water and to offset energy use. Carleton understood the importance of securing the building envelope so it made sense to add P/V systems.

Energy creation is good…and seems to be the only thing to get the government’s attention…but won’t be a feasible source (cost wise) if buildings don’t start limiting their energy consumption. ICFs can limit a building’s energy use! See their live energy use data.

Beyond the Insulating Concrete Form

Carleton College has identified over 36 distinct green attributes to these buildings, other than the use of ICFs and fly ash in the concrete. From reflective roof tiles, to using local vegetation for landscaping, this college is on the leading edge of sustainability.

As you can see there are wonderful things going on in the ICF world up in Minnesota. Next week we’ll go over the star contributors to this project and show some great cold weather concreting pictures.

This was one of our favorite projects for 2009. There were so many features to these buildings and Carleton College truly showed their commitment to a sustainable campus. In the next few posts I will attempt to give our due diligence to this project, show you different construction phases and the finished project as well. Carleton College Residence Halls also won an ICF Builder Award, which was announced at World of Concrete 2010.

Building Energy Modeling Analysis

A building energy modeling analysis (from The Weidt Group) was completed during design, and it was determined that total energy consumption would decrease a minimum of 28% compared to a standard baseline building performance. Carleton did not install ANY A/C as well due to the tight thermal envelope created by ICFs. I asked Maureen Ness, AIA, LEED AP, CDT, with LHB to explain how the modeling worked:

“It basically shows that by spending $54,941 more than a typical building on specific energy-saving strategies, the annual energy savings will be $29,476. There are a lot of factors in the modeling and one of them that we’ve seen on non-air conditioned housing projects is that you don’t really get credit for not air-conditioning, even though that is a lot of savings over a conventional building.”

The total payback, of the additional costs, of making these ICF Dormitories energy efficient is 1.5 years!

(Do you want an energy analysis done on your current home being designed? We are offering a free energy analysis to show you the dramatic savings you can get with ICFs.)

Sustainable features of Carleton College

Overall, Carleton College has identified over 36 distinct aspects to these building that are considered sustainable features. From low flush toilets that will save 30% on water, to copper tiles on southern facing roofs to deflect heat gain, LED lighting, as well as natural foliage planted around campus that is sturdy and weather resistant. All of these features are contributing to their LEED Gold certification.

Next week, we will show you all the live energy data from the school as well as some more highlights of this project. In the meantime check out the rest of our highlighted ICF projects or our ICF gallery section on rewardwalls.com.

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.

1. 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.
2. The mason contractor can bid both ICF and CMU packages.
3. 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