Karen Cohen organized a light bulb drive in Pacific Palisades in 2007.
By KAREN MARTINEZ (aka KAREN MARTINEZ COHEN)
Hi, neighbors! It’s your local building and home improvement nerd here.
For those of you who were living in the Palisades in 2007, you might remember the Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb Drive that I held with the huge clear box filled with incandescent light bulbs in front of the LADWP building on Sunset.
Well, I’m at it again, but this time it’s with building materials! I’ve been an owner/builder in the Palisades for the last 25 years or so, and in the very early 2000s, I learned about a building material called ICCF Blocks. I had always wanted to build with them, as I thought that they were a brilliant way to build, but somehow my late husband and I never really got around to it.
Well, I bought a house in Sunset Mesa a couple of years ago, and it burned down to the ground, and I have to say that I’m actually excited that I’m finally going to be able to build with the ICCF Blocks.
The blocks are made out of a mixture of ground up Styrofoam, cement and a few other proprietary ingredients. You build your foundation with rebar sticking up every 12 inches, then you stack the blocks on top like Legos.
The blocks are four-feet long, ten-inches wide and twelve inches tall, but because of the Styrofoam, at 62 years old, even I can lift them. You frame out the openings for your doors and windows, add horizontal and vertical rebar as you go, and then you fill the 6” x 6” cores with concrete.
Of course, you have to build your roof (steel frame with concrete on top is probably best), install your doors and windows (possibly with fire shutters), do your plumbing, electrical and HVAC, stucco it (or whatever fireproof exterior you want), and put in your kitchen and bathrooms, but the block part of it is relatively easy.
The reason I’m actually excited to be building with the blocks is that, first of all, they’re fireproof. The blocks form a 6” x 6” lattice of concrete and rebar, and the mixture in the blocks has a four-hour fire rating which protects it.
The lattice creates the structure of the walls, and in the case of an earthquake, the shear strength is about six to seven times stronger than wood and steel frame construction. Also, because of the lattice format, there’s a bit of flexibility in it. It also has a 250-mph wind rating, and on top of that, there’s no cellulose in it, so it doesn’t get termites, dry rot, or mold.
Anyway, one of the owners of the company that I’m buying the blocks from in Arizona (click here), is coming out this weekend to show everyone here in the Palisades the blow torch test, how to build with it, how to do electrical and plumbing with it, etc. (…I’m actually so nerdy that I drove out to Arizona a couple of weeks after the fire to check out their factories and building sites, and learn all of this).
You’ll be able to pick the blocks up, cut them, and even try stuccoing them if you’d like. We’re getting together at the end of my driveway at 3709 Surfwood Road in Sunset Mesa this Saturday, March 15, at 2 p.m.
If PCH is closed, we’ll be meeting at the picnic tables at Rustic Canyon Park at 2:30 p.m. We will also have contractors there to discuss preliminary prices for a house built out of the blocks (…it’s comparable to wood frame construction)! If you’d like to come, please bring your architects and contractors as well. I hope to see you there.
Thank you, Karen. We truly appreciate being part of California’s rebuilding efforts. At last, we can help everyone construct with safe, rigorously tested products that can save lives.
Our products undergo third-party testing from accredited facilities and hold a Los Angeles Research Report (LARR) certification. Our ASTM testing includes:
ASTM E119 – Fire resistance of building materials. DOES NOT BURN
ASTM E84 – Surface burning characteristics. ZERO SMOKE AND FLAME SPREAD
ASTM C578 – Performance of rigid cellular polystyrene insulation
ASTM C665 – Physical properties of thermal insulation
ASTM C90 – Load-bearing concrete masonry units
ASTM E2634 – Standard specification for Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs) for walls
These rigorous tests ensure that our materials meet the highest safety and durability standards, providing resilient, energy-efficient, and fire-safe construction solutions.
I helped my sister build her house in WA with these materials! She had concrete foundation poured, cured … then the two of us put up all the walls ourselves ( in WA rain!) in about a week! Granted, it’s a small house and just one story but we did it ourselves! Roof was done by a hired crew and then it was stuccoed. It’s 10 yrs old and still in great shape!
I hope this opportunity was well attended as I am very familiar with this construction method being a building designer. I have a project in Lobo Canyon currently under construction using ICF (Insulated Concrete Form), the same idea but comes with different size cores which get filled with concrete after the rebar and 2.5” insulated foam on the sides get built. The original compound of 4 buildings burned down during the Woolsey Fire. The only drawback is if space is tight. In other words, the walls with a 4” core become 9” wide with the 2.5” on each side before wall finishes are applied.
For those whose residence was on Radcliffe, there was an odd, unfinished ICF structure on the west side of the street with the white “Lego” blocks. It did not burn down. The insulated foam did turn black though since there were not any finishes on the structure.