ICF Stem Wall Foundation

Shawn McDaniel, of SED Contractors, has been forming concrete using plywood forms for the last 21 years. Shawn was reluctant to use ICFs, but after attending our training seminar in March, he decided to try. In this video Shawn provides his opinion on the Nudura® block.

The stem wall foundation was 6' in height with 245' of perimeter distance. The height was achieved with only 4 Nudura blocks as each block has a height of 18". As the blocks are 8' long, each has an area of 12 square feet, greatly increasing the speed of installation. The effective R value of Nudura is R23, very important in the cold winter climate of Whistler.

This is a timber frame home with the timbers and panels supplied and installed by Purcell Timberframes. Click on the image to visit the Purcell Timberframes website. Structural engineering was completed by SEL Engineering Ltd. of Port Moody BC.

"I'm impressed with the system", said Shawn. "We got delivery of the blocks 9:00 AM Wednesday morning. At noon we had the garage done and two blocks around the rest of the building. At 3:00 o'clock we had finished stacking blocks and were placing the Zont™ bracing."

"This system is a dream to work with.. it stacks together real quickly by hand. One of the advantages of the system is that you're not worn out at the end of the day."

As the ground was engineered fill, it was close to impossible to drive even a metal stake into the ground. When pouring his footings, Shawn strategically placed blobs of concrete onto which he attached the Zont™ bracing.