ICF and Steel Are the Winners

One of the challenges related to selling pro-eco-environment, pro-innovation in the construction industry is the amount of effort taken to convince engineers, architects, and building owners why ICF and steel materials are two of the primary keys to better building, beyond offering lower costs and increased quality.

Using forests and trees (whether sourced from certified-forests, or not) in common building structures is outdated technology—very little has changed in over a 100 years. Yes, there are a handful of examples across the globe of very old wood structures still standing today. Yet, no one mentions the amount of maintenance or the money spent to keep these wood structures standing.

No mention of how wood structures require frequent upkeep and treatments with chemicals applied to keep the organic material from decomposing as it gets exposed to various environmental elements: sun, wind, fire, heat/cold, moisture, and insects/pests.

And there’s never any comparison mentioning how many very old steel and concrete structures are still standing and how these far outnumber the old wood structures.

Every once in awhile a news article will pop up about how wood can be considered a green building material, and the arguments used to support this idea are often taken from the very arguments used to advocate for steel and concrete. Sometimes authors of these articles will even throw in some bashing of the idea to even consider steel and concrete as the better, greener, more eco-friendly material over wood.

Many of these articles typically downplay all the negative factors and twist these into theorized positive qualities for why wood is somehow a superior building material. These articles leave us scratching our heads, since we know using wood in practice does not achieve the any of the results claimed by the authors.

We don’t bash wood, it is a useful material in creating many beautiful things like furniture, cabinets, and architectural-esthetics. Although we are long overdue for removing wood structures from our building lexicon in the US, so we can preserve wood for its beauty, rather than stuffing it into a structure.

You might be interested to know there is undeclared, underground battle between wood (nature-made) and steel/concrete (man-made) building materials, and the winner has been clear to us for over a decade.

For us the most convincing data has been the pictures. Although, it’s sad it takes devastating natural disasters to point to the clear winner.

Here’s a display of photo images showing ICF/steel homes built next to wood homes. You decide — who’s the winner?

FIRE-RESISTANT

San Diego, California, wildfire in 2017 devastated many homes. Only three homes remained intact, and all 3 were built with ICFs and concrete tile roofs.

WIND-RESISTANT

Hurricane Michael – October 2018 - a Category 4 struck and left catastrophic damage in its wake. It was recorded as the most powerful hurricane recorded in the Florida panhandle in a century.

It’s referred to as the Mexican Beach house and was built with ICF and steel roofing, and it survived with little to no damage. Also, notice how a home was provided protection by the SuperStructure, it continues to sit directly behind the Mexican Beach house.

STORM-SURGE & FLOOD RESISTANT

In 2012, the Hallet family rode out Superstorm Sandy hurricane in their two-story, 4,000-sq-ft ICF home in Union Beach, New Jersey. All the wood structures around them did not survive the damage from the storm surge and the flooding.

Anyone who’s experienced flooding in a wood structure knows the damage created when wood and water mix together, and the mold that quickly grows.

Galvanized steel and concrete are impervious to water exposure from flooding and do not support mold growth. Another huge bonus, flood cleanup is far easier and far less costly with a SuperStructure.