According to Ross Monsour, Director of Marketing for the Ready-Mixed Concrete Association of Ontario (RMCAO), the National Research Council of Canada has recently completed some testing on ICF and Thermal Mass. The results have debunked the myth that the thermal mass has no effect due to the insulation on both sides of the concrete.  In fact, the thermal mass has a tempering effect (up to five days) that holds a huge potential for demand management for utilities in both heating and cooling environments.

Another significant conclusion is that using ICF will allow for a reduction in mechanical equipment sizing. This will only be possible once the computer models such as HOT2000 (Energuide program software) are upgraded. This means that if an energy efficient house is modeled using ICF, the house will see improved energy efficiency not currently accounted for in the regular computer models. The next proposed phase of the work will be to do some of the modeling. The only impact that could not be seen was an actual increase in the R-value of the overall performance of the wall. In other words, the overall thermal value of the wall is still the R- value of the individual components.

The final report is expected to be released later this month and will be presented at the CHBA Technical Research Committee on October 28th in Ottawa, ON.