SEARCH RESULTS FOR “Block”

For­ti­fied home con­struc­tion refers to using mate­ri­als and tech­niques in com­bi­na­tion with one anoth­er to make your home stronger and more resilient as a shel­ter.

The steel rein­forced con­crete, which can cure stronger than nor­mal con­crete because of the foam insu­la­tion, can with­stand winds of over 200 MPH, and pro­jec­tile debris trav­el­ing over 100 MPH. There are dozens of eye wit­ness exam­ples of ICF homes tak­ing EF5 tor­na­does head on with the walls still stand­ing.

A few sur­viv­ing hous­es caught the eye of media out­lets around the world, seem­ing­ly untouched by Hur­ri­cane Michael’s destruc­tion. What made these hous­es dif­fer­ent?

Jan­u­ary through April is when we plant our seeds for the year by dis­play­ing our prod­uct for the mar­ket in trade shows. I’ve par­tic­i­pat­ed in these trade shows for 17 years now in the ICF indus­try and it has always been the same old thing, but this year was notably dif­fer­ent.

When you’re ready to move for­ward with your project, find­ing the right con­trac­tor can be a daunt­ing task.

Water­front homes are one of the most sought after prop­er­ties in the coun­try. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, homes on the water face weath­er con­di­tions and a cli­mate that can be destruc­tive to the home.

Despite under­stand­ing the need for sus­tain­abil­i­ty, many archi­tects, design­ers and build­ing own­ers see the asso­ci­at­ed costs as a bar­ri­er. The real­i­ty is that, while switch­ing to sus­tain­able build­ing prac­tices does require an ini­tial invest­ment, it’s not as much as many assume.

I had a call this week from a con­trac­tor who want­ed to know if there was an easy way to build a two foot jog into a wall. This brought back flash­backs of when I used to attempt to inter­lock cor­ners think­ing the strength of the inter­lock was going to hold things togeth­er dur­ing con­crete place­ment.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is rapid­ly gain­ing momen­tum on a glob­al scale. But meet­ing mod­ern sus­tain­abil­i­ty require­ments presents a chal­lenge to con­struc­tion com­pa­nies and build­ing own­ers alike.

In 2019, con­struc­tion indus­try trends wel­come advance­ments in build­ing meth­ods and mate­ri­als; how­ev­er, the indus­try still strug­gles with ongo­ing labor short­ages.