Mercer Island Siding – ICF
Synapse construction has recently started its first Mercer Island siding project on an insulated concrete form (ICF) framed home. ICF are concrete forms that have foam on both sides and are filled with concrete. ICF buildings are highly energy efficient. I was told by the ICF sub contractor that it’s about 20% more to build a home from ICF versus traditional wood framing and fiberglass insulation. With the energy efficiency gains it seems the added cost would get returned fairly quickly with the lower heating and cooling bills.
Installing Mercer Island siding on ICF:
The ICF has plastic strips embedded in the foam which gives the forms their strength. Every 8″ there is a vertical strip of plastic about 3/4″ behind the face of the foam on both the interior and exterior of the block. The plastic strips are where the interior and exterior finishes are fastened. In our case we are installing a rain screen siding system. We are attaching pressure treated battens every 16″ into the plastic strips. Our Mercer Island siding project consists of metal and fiber cement panel siding. The majority of the siding is installed horizontally and works well with the vertical wood battens however we do have a volume that is sided with vertical metal panels. In these areas we will have horizontal 20 gauge metal strapping to attach the vertical panels to and maintain our rain screen drain plane.
Unique Mercer Island siding details:
We are using horizontal metal siding with mitered outside corners which creates a stunningly flowing and sofisticated modern yet classic look. The corners are pre-fabricated locally using a proprietary method that creates perfect pre-formed corners from the material we supplied so we know they will match perfectly. Also we are custom fabricating break shape metal profiles that wrap the corners of the recessed window openings and continue the profile of the metal which further refines the continuous flow what will be a very attractive and unique Mercer Island home.
