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We built a test wall 440 feet long x 9′-4″ tall with 24 turns, with no brac­ing or strap­ping, to test the 90 degree blocks with con­crete.

Fox Blocks donat­ed Insu­lat­ed Con­crete Forms (ICF) to the Habi­tat For Humanity’s 30^th Annu­al Jim­my and Ros­alynn Carter Work Project. The vol­un­teers and mate­ri­als donat­ed by Fox Blocks will help rebuild the home of Elmer Lamberson’s whose home was lost in Super­storm Sandy.

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.

The design team at SMP Archi­tec­ture want­ed to cre­ate a safe and secure, sus­tain­able struc­ture with low main­te­nance costs for the own­ers.

For gen­er­a­tions, the con­struc­tion of exte­ri­or walls has fol­lowed tra­di­tion­al prac­tices that have pri­mar­i­ly involved wood or steel fram­ing. These meth­ods have been the back­bone of res­i­den­tial and light com­mer­cial con­struc­tion, by pro­vid­ing shel­ter, sta­bil­i­ty, and a cer­tain lev­el of insu­la­tion.

To keep up with Cal­i­for­ni­a’s strict ener­gy stan­dards, many builders and archi­tects are turn­ing to ICF con­struc­tion.

Prop­er con­crete mix saves time on labor, facil­i­tates con­crete con­sol­i­da­tion and ensures a suc­cess­ful Fox Blocks wall pour.

Sev­en spe­cif­ic prob­lems with wood frame con­struc­tion include fire- and wind-resis­tance, dura­bil­i­ty, low ther­mal mass, shrink­age, and com­pro­mised acoustics and indoor air qual­i­ty (IAQ).