Build Your Own House

ICF Contractors

Summary: A good Insulated Concrete Forms manufacturer can help you find a good ICF contractor or subcontractor for constructing your ICF house.

Carl,

I am currently looking to build my own home using the technology Insulated Concrete Forms, ICF. It's fairly new, or at least minimally used in the US.

Trying to find good and experienced contractors or subcontractors for this type of build is difficult.

What do you suggest?

Thanks,
D.F.

Hi D.F.,

Being the GENERAL CONTRACTOR for an ICF house is no different than being a GENERAL CONTRACTOR for a log home, or any other type of differently constructed home.The difference in a type of construction simply means finding a different subcontractor or subcontractors familiar with the type of construction.

As with log homes, Insulated Concrete Forms or ICF homes are out of the mainstream of residential construction as they require a special contractor, one with experience in building the ICF walls.

After that, it’s back to basics of residential construction.

Good ICF contractors are indeed more difficult to locate.

But any good manufacturer has a network of distributors who will help you locate a good contractor. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t sell too many systems, Right?

I am impressed with a company called Quad-Lock. They seem to be very consumer oriented.

On their website, www.quadlock.com, you can easily locate a distributor in your state or area, who can then find you an experienced subcontractor to make your build job go fast and smoothly.

They also have videos on their site that you will find informative, such as a time lapse video of construction by an experience subcontracting crew.

Good Luck D.F., and let us all know how well your ICF house build job goes.

Carl Heldmann