The Faswall ICF System

ICF stands for insulated concrete forms. These are used in place of concrete blocks or poured concrete walls. ICF can be used for the entire envelope of the house. Mine will go from the basement floor all the way to the roof. I don't think I will have enough to use for the end gables, though, or I would. I maxed out on a truckload full. If I had shipped more, it would have had to go on a second truck, which would have cost more in shipping costs than the extra Faswall would have been worth. I got very good service from Shelterworks, the company which produces Faswall in Washington State.

Until I attended Oram Miller's lecture on green and healthy buildings, I had no idea material like Faswall existed. Unfortunately, the only two materials like this, Faswall and Durisol, have to be shipped from far away (Washington State and Canada, respectively). So making building materials out of post-consumer recycled wood is good, the green properties of those materials is good, but not being able to obtain the product locally is bad. The amount of diesel need to ship a huge truckload (it was exactly the maximum load limit) makes me cringe. I try and rationalize this by thinking that when there is enough of a demand, a factory will open up nearby. My promotion of Faswall may help spur demand, who knows?

Here is some background lifted from the Faswall website:

"After World War II amidst the rubble and destruction a way was discovered to take the huge volumes of wood waste, grind it into chips, mineralize the chips to neutralize the natural sugars that cause rot, and bond them to cement to form a building block. This is the genesis of the Faswall™ ICF Wall Form. Since then, tens of thousands of homes and commercial buildings have been built in Europe and Asia and North America with this remarkable material. This remains one of the preferred methods of building in Europe. It has been available in North America for close to 30 years. In 1987 Hans and Leni Walter of K-X Faswall International Corp. advanced the state of the art with a patented mineralization process that allows virtually any wood or cellulose fiber to be bonded to cement. The wall form blocks are manufactured in 24" long modular units to aid the designer. They are designed to be under 30 lbs to aid the installer. Simply stack the wall forms on top of one another without mortar. The interlocking end design keeps the wall forms in place. Rebar is set both horizontally and vertically within the stacked forms prior to filling the cores with concrete. This creates a "post and beam" grid effect which makes the wall exceptionally strong. Essentially, Faswall™ is a efficient method of building a reinforced concrete wall with built-in thermal, acoustical and fire protection. Our wall-forms can be used above-grade, below-grade, for commercial or residential applications."

Here are some pictures of Faswall from the Faswall Website:

My truckload of Faswall arrived recently.

There were 30 pallets of Faswall. Each pallet weighs over a ton.

Unloading the Faswall from the truck to the street.

The Faswall safely deposited on the lot.