Legos® get lots of air time when describing the simplicity of stacking ICF forms. With ARXX Steel forms, the interlock between adjacent blocks is provided by tongues and grooves. All ICF forms require some method of holding forms together, clips or snaps or the like. In ARXX Steel's case, foam glue is used in the grooves (bottom of the form) of a loose form before fastening it to the wall assembly. This foam glue is extremely strong so that after just a few minutes, you will not be able to separate the forms without physically cutting them apart. This provides strength and resilience during the concrete pour. Maybe an even more important benefit is that the combination of glue with the tongue and groove feature provides resistance to deflection, or settling of the forms during concrete placement. ARXX Steel forms retain their assembled height, and on a building with critical dimensions (what building isn't?) this is key. A ten foot floor to floor height is sacred, no room for squashing the forms to 9' 11 1/2".
A two man team can really speed up the process. While one is placing the form in the wall, the other glues the next block which is ready when the first block is set.
These blocks were going in at a rate of about 1 every 30 seconds. Granted, with an intense reinforcement schedule and unique form cutting such as utilized on this project, stretches of speedy stacking are frequently interrupted to allow for prescribed rebar placement. With a 10-person crew, this full wall assembly is installing (from footer to concrete pour--stacking, rebar, bracing, buck assembly and placement, concrete placement) at a rate of about 80 forms per day, or 8 forms per person per day. The kicker is that these walls do not require the additional man-hours to insulate, fur out, or wrap the wall assembly. It is a complete, finish ready system.
Another interesting fact about this ICF building -- It will have about 50,000 square feet of ICF wall. But, because of the cast-in-place nature of the assembly, the building will consist of only 30-35 single panels of monolithic concrete. So the average size of each unique structural section is about 1500 square feet!
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