ICF

Early on in my home building odyssey I was very skeptical of the way homes are being built. Issues with mold and water damage had me thinking that homes built from wood were just not viable. I was convinced that Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) was the way to go. I found lots of excellent sites on ICF construction and products. The ICFHomes site is one of the best. The ICF fourm over at GreenBuildingTalk is also great.

As I did my research I began to feel more comfortable with stick built homes. As will all things knowledge is power. It is not that wood is a bad way to build, but rather there are more folks building with wood so there are more bad buildings made of wood. Mistakes can be made with concrete just was easily and they are typically harder to fix. I am still considering ICF as my wife is still convinced it is the right way to go, but we will see.

For the Pros...

The Journal of Light Construction (JLC) has a great web site with a good forum for builders. They specifically don't want owner-builders on the forums, but it is a great place to read about how to d things the right way (and avoid hiring the guys who do it the wrong way). The interesting thing about this forum is that unlike Owner-Builder forums people don't stop posting when they are done with their project. Forums like the GardenWeb and the OwnerBuilderBook tend to be an endless series of the same questions asked and answered by folks as they move through their project phases.