Not only do ICF walls increase the resistance to fire and safety from natural disasters, but their airtight qualities allow for better indoor air quality, by giving the control back to the occupants of the building. Restricted Bundle Security Loop Cable TiesĢ5 PERCENT RESTOCKING FEES ASSOCIATED WITH RETURNįREE SHIPPING ON ALL FULL & HALF CONTAINER SKUs QUANTITY ORDERSīy building with Fox Blocks Insulating Concrete Forms (ICF), you can produce a sustainable building enclosure that is energy efficient, durable and requires little maintenance.Avery Dennison® Cable Tie Adhesive Mount.The drywall compound does not crack on Omni Block walls.ĭrywall compound does not contain formaldehyde chemicals and does not outgas like drywall. Similar materials expand at the same rate when exposed to temperature variations. Omni Block walls are set on engineered footings and stems. For a complete review of the Omni Block drywall process click on this link.ĭrywall compound bonds extremely well to block surfaces and will not chip of the surface. The photo to the right is a typical skim-coat application. Skim-coating drywall compound onto the block provides the same final appearance as sheets of drywall, but does not affect or reduce the exposed thermal mass properties of the wall. It is highly recommended to never drywall over an Omni Block wall. Note that the inorganic ICF system now has organic (wood) integral parts permanently introduced into the building’s exterior walls.Īdding sheets of drywall significantly reduces the thermal efficiencies of an Omni Block wall. The wood nailers are in effect cemented into place, which also means that they cannot be moved. The wood nailers are securely attached to the face of the foam blocks and all jambs of window and doors by adding bolts or long screws through the nailer and into the area that will be grouted. The preplanning of where all of the future attached items are to be located is paramount, but certainly doable. Attempting to affix these type of items without nailers would mean that very long and very thick masonry set bolts are required in order to get through the interior foam face and into the grout behind. ICF walls require wood nailers (bucks) around all openings and where heavy items (cabinets, mirrors, adjoining interior walls) are going to be affixed to the wall. These plastic connectors also serve as vertical strips to screw drywall sheets to. Most ICF systems have plastic connectors between the foam sides of the blocks. How is a defective wire repaired should one occur in the future? How is an additional electrical box added to an ICF wall? What if your wife or one of your kids wants to hang a photo and hits that wiring with a nail or screw? Why does code allow this installation technique if it is unsafe? What happens when a picture, mirror or anything is hung on the wall and a nail or screw hits that unprotected wiring? The electrical wiring is unprotected other than a thin jacket of PVC and once the drywall covers the electrical wiring no one knows exactly where it is. Sheets of drywall are used to cover the foam block wall along with the electrical wiring. Electrical wiring can run anywhere on the surface of the foam block advantage ICF construction, or is it? PVC-jacketed electrical wiring (Romex illustrated in the photos to the left and below) is then placed in the groves. The electrical in ICF construction is easily installed by hot-knifing a grove in the face of the foam block where electrical is called for. ICF constructed buildings have no effective thermal mass because the insulation on the interior side of the wall that is exposed to the living/working area resists heat from reaching the mass within the wall. The System 12 pictured above adds a third layer of insulation followed by a fourth layer of masonry, all with minimal cross-webbing. If you analyze the individual System 8 Omni Block unit, there is an interior face that is masonry (thermal mass) then a layer of insulation with minimal cross-webbing, then a layer of masonry (not thermal mass since it is not exposed to the living/working environment), then another layer of insulation with minimal cross-webbing… stop there! Insulation is on the outside of the wall, the additional layer of masonry is only there for structural reasons and results in a durable wall that can be finished in a wide variety of ways and colors. To add to this, Omni Block grout cells are typically on the interior inside of the wall, thus while giving up some insulation where the grout cells do occur, thermal mass is added. Omni Block has the second part totally correct. The second part of the perfect world however, is that thermal mass would be in the inside of the wall and exposed to the living/work environment. In a perfect world, insulation (heat resistance) would be on the outside of the wall.
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