How environmentally sustainable are ICFs?
Everybody used to think that anything involving concrete is inherently unsustainable; how wrong. When you take into account the holistic journey from where a material is sourced to when it becomes a construction product the truth is quit startling. Concrete as a building material has an embodied energy of 153Kg/tonne compared with timber frame which is 449Kg/tonne. This is because more than 95% of timber used in the manufacture of timber frame homes is harvested overseas and transported to the UK. And steel; 1932Kg/tonne!
