6 in 1 Construction
Perfectly designed for easy installs by small and moderately skilled crews, Element ICF® accomplishes 6 construction steps and provides 4 building science control layers in a single, simple step.
6
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4
building science
control layers
“6 steps in 1” means Element ICF projects require fewer trades. This results in a smoother construction process with fewer potential inter-trade disputes.
It also means better productivity and faster work completion. To get a rough estimate of the man-hours needed for an Element ICF project, check out our Labor Hours Estimating Worksheet.
This form helps you work out your project’s complexity based on weather, site conditions, crew skill, and building parameters, and estimates the needed labor hours accordingly. (Keep in mind – it’s just a guideline.)
Three ICF Installation Labor Case Studies
(These Cases Studies Are Based On Logix ICF Projects)
Simple ICF Basement
Based on the testimony of an affiliated contractor, a productivity rate of 0.05 man-hour per square foot of wall is what his crew needed to achieve to get his overall cost of a high-performance insulated concrete form foundation on par with that of a regular, conventionally formed foundation.
In terms of construction time, he found that with a crew of 3, he would take roughly 3.5 workdays to erect a 2,000 ft2 ICF basement with 9-foot 4-inch foundation walls. Using conventional forming methods, the same work could take up to 2 weeks and require different crews to form, pour, insulate, frame, and finish the walls.
ICF vs. CMU Tall Walls
Large commercial projects often come with vast dimensions. Often the walls are longer and taller and can call for a lot of labor. Speed and efficiency give insulated concrete forms a significant edge over the more traditional methods in such projects.
One such actual building, measuring 210’x210′, with 33-foot walls, took only 33 days to complete with Logix ICF. That translated to a labor rate of 0.109 man-hours per square foot for this complex wall assembly.
Per RS Means, North America’s most trusted estimating resource, the same tall walls would be built with a labor rate of 0.217 man-hours per square foot had Concrete Masonry Units (CMU) been used instead of Logix ICF.
That’s twice as labor-intensive!
Mid-Rise Wood-Framed Construction
They can be a firefighter’s worst nightmare. Yet, wood-framed mid-rise multi-family buildings are ubiquitous in the US and Canada. That’s because lumber has been known in the past for being relatively cheap to build with when compared to concrete.
In reality, the potential for lower materials’ cost quickly loses its edge when you factor in the design complexity and the installation labor requirements.
There’s no better way to compare 2 distinct construction methods than to see them side-by-side. So, let’s take a look at a recent example in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where two nearby mid-rise buildings were erected together. One of them was wood-framed, while the other was built with Logix ICF.
The wood-framed building needed 28 different types of shear walls to meet the design intentions and the code. To construct these, the project used 15-20 laborers and burned through 18,000 man-hours.
In contrast, the ICF constructed building comprised only 2 wall types and one lintel design consistent through the building. With a simplified design, the ICF constructed building used a crew of 8 and 12,000 man-hours during construction.
In the end, both buildings ended up costing roughly the same. The wood-framed structure had the edge in cheaper framing materials but cost more in labor; its ICF constructed counterpart incurred higher material costs but took less time to construct.
So, in this case, labor savings meant a better quality building was delivered for a similar cost.
