Finishing the ICF walls - Gigacrete

Now that the ICF walls are complete we are starting to turn our attention to how we are going to finish them both inside and outside and when.

We are using two products by a company called Gigarete for our finished interior and exterior surface. As we are not fans of drywall we jumped through hoops to avoid it but as with many alternative building materials we found that most options were not available in the U.S. and shipping from Europe (where most alternatives were manufactured) was ridiculously costly and defeated the mission of our "green" house. We also needed both coverings to meet the CA Building Code fire standard, again not easy to find.

So enter Gigacrete (found by our structural engineer - Mark ) and their products; PlasterMax and StuccoMax, both the interior and exterior products that meet our fire rating and are no-VOC, no-silica and non-toxic which is fantastic. Gigrete is a very cool company with some amazing products in research and some in production that will hopefully revolutionize the building industry and get us away from the stuck in the mud approach we current use and methods and products that are NOT healthy, not sustainable, completely unsafe for most of the regions of the country we live in and just boring making every house look like the house before it. Check out the video below of some of the ideas Gigacrete is coming up with.



Below is a video that shows both PlasterMax and StuccoMax installed in a home. The plant is in Las Vegas, NV so we will be heading down there in a few weeks to pick up the material and go over some application methods with the plant manager so we can learn some best practices as we will be installing it ourselves.



We are really excited about getting this up on the walls both inside and outside. The exterior product is a light gray and the interior is a tan color and of course you can paint them any color if you want as well. I am tempted to see how the 'as is' color comes out before deciding if we paint. Both applications are one coat - two pass application and cure overnight so you can paint or finish the next day.

Follow this space to see how this all comes out - getting closer!!