ICF Progress Thurs 8/12

I have been giving step by step progress of our first floor house construction using Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF). For a chronological listing of our building projects, be sure to look through the ICF Building Index. I am truly amazed at how fast the walls go up using ICF blocks. As you can see at 10:00 am Thursday we have 2 courses done. With the concrete scheduled to be poured at 1:00 Friday, we still have a lot to do! While some of the children continued to glue and snap together wall, others began to put the bracing together. From our 20 year old down to our 5 year old, everyone wanted to be involved. Even our 22 mth old walked around picking up screws and trash. (A large family certainly comes in handy!) I love the opportunity for them all to be involved and learn character and skills that they will use in their lives. Back to our progress ... The forms will hold the concrete but the bracing is used to insure straight walls. The brace parallel to the forms will be screwed into place before the concrete is poured.  The blue metal pole coming from the wall at a 45 degree angle will be screwed into a block of wood which will be glued to the slab. So the morning continued snapping, gluing, putting up bracing complete with walk boards on top. Although we tend to grow them tall, once we reached the fifth course, the top could not be reached. The walk boards were used to finish the last course as well as pouring the concrete. By Thursday evening we had finished the fifth course and begun the sixth. As the sun set I noticed the view our our soon to be kitchen window: We continued to work into the night. I moved the van so the headlights would shine upon our work area but ..  the mosquitoes! They were vicious man, woman and child eaters! So, at 9:40 pm we were pulling away for a much needed night's sleep.