ICF Walls – Scaffold and Braces A Necessity

As Ben Kyle of ICF Building Solutions set to work building the foundation for our log home, all walls were braced from the outside (vertical posts in the photo below), and scaffolding braces and a walkway were created.

This was all in preparation for ‘pour day’ which everyone referenced with delight and anticipation. Pour Day is “where the rubber meets the road” so to speak and contractor, home owner, and every worker on the site can witness first hand how skilled the styrofoam installation expert really is.

Why It Is Important to Brace Your ICF Walls

Without braces there is no way to tell – 100% – if the walls will square up, pour level, or for that matter even hold up to the hundreds of pounds of concrete pumped into them on the big day.

We happened to notice another contractor in the Bancroft area working on a nearby site all week that did not have braces on the exterior ICF walls — and Eric and I both felt sorry for the person who would end up having to finish, frame, or even buy that house one day.

Why You Want to See Your Contractor Using Scaffolding

I may not have ‘all’ the reasons here in the argument ‘for’ scaffolding, but I do know on our job, it was a well-used ‘cat-walk’ come pour day.

Not only could our contractor (Jason Hoover of ICF Building Solutions) inspect every block laid, all use of rebar, and ensure the walls were square and level – others on the build also used the scaffold cat-walk.

Staff on the site during the pour could easily move from corner to corner and inspect the insertion of the concrete into the styrofoam’s core.

Our log home site photographer also moved around with ease and managed to film and shoot from every angle requested of her.

And finally, the pumper truck’s operator (whose name has eluded me at the moment) could easily get a bird’s eye view of everyone involved in the pour – and be within earshot of our requests to ’stop’, ‘move the arm’ and ‘let it rip’.

To work on a job like this without scaffolding and supports would not only be too much risk for error (in my humble opinion) but also make the job a lot more difficult. If you’ll be contracting this work out for your own log home build, be sure to call Jason or confirm with your contractor ahead of time that both scaffolding and exterior braces will be used.

Stay tuned for my upcoming post and photos about ‘pour day’.