See BuildBlock ICFs in person June 29th & 30th at Home Builders Resource Expo: Rebuilding After A Wildfire | Silver Dollar Fairgrounds, Chico, CA When rebuilding after a disaster using BuildBlock ICFs gives you peace of mind for the future and delivers the many benefits of ICFs every day for you and your family. BuildBlock ICFs deliver superior energy performance and disaster resilience. Whether choosing comfort, extreme energy-efficiency, enhanced disaster resilience, ease of construction, quietness, or superior air quality you get every benefit no matter what. Visit BuildBlock in person and discuss design, building, benefits, and engineering at the summit. Click the button
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News of natural disasters appear almost daily in the media. While some events, such as floods and earthquakes, are restricted within certain geographic regions, wind storms respect no such bounds. Some areas of the country are more prone to tornadoes or hurricanes, but high wind gusts can hit anywhere. The potential for hurricane damage increases as more and more people willingly accept or ignore the associated risk of living in coastal areas. Yet, year after year, houses are demolished, and people lose their lives. The challenge is to rebuild in a way that will best weather the next storm, and
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NBC Bank Utilizes BuildBlock ICF’s Disaster Resistance Capabilities for security of important documents and equipment. As far as banks go, this is one of the most energy-efficient banks in Oklahoma. Banks are high traffic, and considerations for foot traffic must be accounted for in the design. ICFs coupled with the spray foam roof insulation lower the utility costs by more than 40%. This project was designed to blend into the surrounding residential area. The owners chose ICF because this branch was outfitted with a data center housing networking and computing infrastructure utilized by the bank. This room had to be protected from the
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The Puddingstone Cottage is a 1,200 square foot all ICF earth bermed home. Even the retaining walls utilize ICFs for their toughness. Puddingstone Cottage is an all ICF home that utilizes full height earth berms on three sides of the house to achieve its ultra-high energy performance and added protection from Mother Nature. This hybrid home is an all-electric house built among 50+ year-old cottages near a lake in southwest Michigan and blends in handsomely with its surroundings. Puddingstone Cottage was designed and built by National Award winning designer/builder Adam Bearup of Hybrid Homes, LLC. Using the research gathered from Bearup’s
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Tornado season is upon us, and once again, we in the Midwest and Southeast will see thunderstorms forming and rolling across the plains, and we will look up and wonder if that is just a low hanging cloud, or something more ominous. Safety is of primary concern during a tornado. It is an immensely powerful, destructive force, which can devastate anything in its path. Historically we in the plains states have been told to move to the middle of your home and either open or close windows depending on who you have listened to. If you had the luxury of
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Drs. Shirley and Jim Salvatore wanted an ICF home with an Old Florida Island Style. This was achieved with ICF block construction by adding wide covered porches to the ICF block shell. A metal hip roof, horizontal cement board siding painted in bright island colors, multiple windows with pocketing sliding glass doors all contributed to the island look, letting beautiful views of the surrounding bay in, on both the front and back of the home. The Salvatore’s home in Matlacha, Florida incredibly energy efficient and insurance costs are low using BuildBlock ICFs. The Florida Energy Efficiency calculations score for this
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The Slagell’s are Building their ICF home with BuildBlock ICFs in Hydro, Oklahoma. The Slagell’s were drawn to the idea of ICFs because of the energy efficiency and long life construction ICFs provide. Doing all the work themselves, they had to choose very closely what materials to use. They chose to use BuildBlock ICFs for their home. Bethanie says, “Everything has been very user friendly. We like that you can reverse the blocks.” The BuildBlock construction phase is finished currently with the windows and doors installed. The home is going to be roughly 1600 sq.f with a very open floor plan for the
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See the Drew Castle built with BuildBlock ICFs from start to finish through this photo gallery. Also see the Drew Castle video series part 1-4 on our blog!
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We’ve all seen what happens on the news when disaster strikes: shattered homes and lives after the tornado or hurricane, smoking ash after the wildfire, and collapsed rubble after the earthquake. Disasters happen when we least expect them,but are something we need to be prepared for. We wear seat belts and have airbags because we have car accidents. Our buildings have smoke alarms and sprinkler systems because we have fire. We keep weather radios and have radar to keep us aware of severe weather. The majority of residential homes in the US are built out of wood. There is a better way
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ICFs provide one of the best protections from all forms of disaster. That’s just one reason we’re so interested in seeing how those disasters affect all of us. Since we are based in Oklahoma we have always been fascinated with Tornadoes, wildfires, earthquakes, and more That’s why when we came across these really cool visualizations of tornadoes we couldn’t resist sharing it. View and enjoy! And remember, big bad Mother Nature can huff and puff, but she’s not going to blow your ICF house down. We are always looking at new ways to demonstrate the wrath of Mother Nature. Tornadoes,
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