Polystyrene formwork block EPICF

for wallinsulatingcorner

Insulating Concrete Forms (ICF) offered an energy-efficient mode of construction long before sustainability was widely pursued or even understood in the overall construction industry. During the past 15 years, sustainability – and in particular energy efficiency – have taken center stage in society. The construction industry has brought laser-like focus to the problem: a variety of building methods are finally seeing improvements in thermal energy efficiency. While the others were catching up, the thermal properties of ICF remained virtually a constant, until recently. There has been (more or less) one standard thickness of insulation available, and the most widely used insulating form material – expanded polystyrene (EPS) – has remained the same. In the past few years, however, ICF makers have stepped up their insulating abilities. To stay ahead of the sustainability curve, they have pursued two different strategies for getting a higher effective R-value from their wall systems. The resulting systems, called Enhanced Performance ICF (EPICF), deliver the advantages of traditional ICF along with a significant increase in energy efficiency.