# APEX Block?



## kalos72 (Aug 27, 2012)

Hello all,

Has anyone used these before?
http://www.apexblock.com/

I am looking for a concrete process where I can mitigate alot of the labor myself or with family/friends. Dry stack was also an option I was looking at.

Also, if that wasn't enough, I would like to be able to build in stages. Say one 20x50 section now. And then in 2-3 years another one off the end of the first.

Suggestions or your personal experiences are really appreciated!!!


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## Allen15 (Apr 18, 2013)

Dry-stack CMU is a good system that is easy to learn, and doesn't require a great deal of skill to do well. You can expand on it after-the-fact with proper surface prep, though you may wish to add "stubs" for future build-out that you only put surface bond cement on half of those "stub" blocks, to make it easier to expand in those directions.

Another thing to consider may be buying a small shotcrete pump, because although it probably has a minimum crew of 2 to operate, you have much greater versatility of what you can do with it, and it is also pretty easy to expand with good adhesion also. If/when you're done expanding, you can sell the shotcrete rig and recover much of your investment in it, if you take decent care of it. Alternatively, you may be able to rent such a rig in your area too.

I don't plan to rent, because I expect I'll have too much fun with it to give it back


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## I_don't_know (Sep 28, 2012)

Those Apex blocks sure sound interesting. My land is near Ten Mile TN, and the New Madrid fault line. They have had 4.7 magnitude quakes in the area and geologist say the quakes could go as high as magnitude 7. The pre-fab walls are only ratted for magnitude 4. I am not sure what the pre-fab blocks are rated for, but the Apex system is rated for 8 on the Richter scale. 
I do hope this will get a lot of input; it will benefit us both.


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## Allen15 (Apr 18, 2013)

It definitely looks interesting, although for more (extreme?) energy efficiency, like on the order of having a fully passive-annual-heat-storage home, I can't help but think that it isn't complete without some more thermal mass on the inside of the walls.

Yes, I like the structural grid ideas they show, and the ease of construction is pretty hard to beat when you have limited labor/budget to work with, but when you're done with building one of those, you'll still need a furnace and A/C system, & you'd still need to feed such a system 10 years later. Over the lifetime of that building, why not build something that is just as sturdy, but can get to a zero-cost energy use in 10 years or less, for the life of the building?

Just my thoughts, although I really do like their system, it shows promise and is a really good step in the right direction.


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## Carroll (Jan 7, 2011)

Allen15, what are you suggesting for a fully passive-annual-heat-storage home? Underground house, earthbag shelter, ?????

Sorry if this is a dumb question . . .


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## Allen15 (Apr 18, 2013)

The concept is called PAHS, or passive annual heat storage, and John Hait wrote a book about it a few years back. You should be able to get more information by doing a Google search for PAHS too, but in short, it goes something like this:

It is commonly thought (& commonly wrong) that the temperature underground is always a steady-state temperature, once you dig down far enough, like 10+ feet or so. That is false. The local steady-state temperature 10+ feet down at anywhere on the planet that isn't directly affected by running water or similar will be an average of the temperature extremes for the surface above, so it can vary widely all over the earth.

Because this is an average of the winter lows & the summer highs, if you put insulation & water proofing say 2 feet under ground horizontally, only the ground above it will be subjected to the seasonal changes, and thereafter, if you pump heat into the ground below that insulation, it will gradually warm up and its steady-state temperature can be raised to a pre-determined designed temperature. Yes, it is possible to design a home such that the temperature will always be 70 degrees inside, all year round, without a furnace or AC running, or the resultant utility bills.

It also takes about 1 month for heat to soak through or flow in the ground per foot, depending upon moisture content, so with the correct building design, one can have a building that soaks up and stores heat during the warmer months, and stores enough heat that it is still releasing that stored heat 6 months later, when it is winter.

If you can put an insulation envelope around the foundation of a building that both sheds/controls water and extends out for at least a 20' radius from the foundation, over time, the ground under that insulation "umbrella" becomes a charged up thermal storage battery for the building in question.

What these concepts mean in real life is that a PAHS home doesn't have to be an underground home, or even an earth-bermed home, although those are much easier to make as PAHS designs, it can be done with ANY home, as long as you have control of the surrounding 10-20' radius of ground around the home.

The original test model for these ideas was an earth-sheltered home in the Rocky mountains, but they found from the first model that they probably needed a larger umbrella (they only did a 10' radius), and that they'd made the windows a bit too small (not enough solar gain). Even still, it performed pretty good, and passively stayed well above freezing when left for months with no heat in the winter.

Now, to follow up on that, once the foundation is built that will help pay the utility bills, the house itself should be built both energy efficient & energy performing too. Studies done at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory on high thermal mass construction performance showed that one can get substantially better thermal performance by putting the high thermal mass on the INSIDE of a wall, and the insulation on the OUTSIDE of the wall, not the way that is most commonly done in normal construction, where there may be a stone/concrete/brick exterior wall, with insulation on the inside...

Furthermore, if you have high-thermal mass walls, floors, & ceilings, those can all absorb heat passively through the window glazing, all year round, not just in the summer, which will both moderate the temperatures, and charge up the thermal battery below. The biggest problem with the early designed "passive solar" homes was that they didn't have enough thermal mass to absorb all of the energy they collected, so they tended to be too hot in the summer & too cold in the winter. Get a big enough battery, combined with good design, and the interior temperature will only fluctuate 2-3 degrees a year (with NO power).

Mike Reynolds (of Earthship fame) is slowly moving in that direction with his designs, but he's an architect, not an engineer, so he has to build it first to prove it will work before he's comfortable with it, and he's been working out his designs for over 40 years now. If you read through his books over the years, you can see a gradual shift to enclose more and more mass under what he calls the "thermal wrap" on his Earthships, and they are starting to perform better and better. He's still venting heat in the summer, because he doesn't include enough mass to store it, but he's slowly moving there.

I don't really want to live in an Earthship, as I'd prefer a different floorplan, but many of the concepts can be borrowed, albeit maybe not as cheaply as he does it, but I'm willing to both pay a little more and work a little harder for my dream castle, & he tends to be trying to design for the lower & lower income market as time goes on.

All that being said, I really do like the ease of construction of the APEX Block system, and it looks like it may even partially answer the first question I asked when I joined this forum about EPS-Crete R-values, but I think that if I was going to use such a system, I'd be planning on using it only for exterior insulation, with a concrete-filled cinderblock wall on the inside, just for added thermal mass.

I still like the idea of shotcrete-applied concrete, because one can still apply EPS-Crete with the same equipment, which is why I was trying to find out the R-values of it for a building design I was working on. AirCrete is rated with an R-value of 3.9/inch, and as far as I can figure, EPS-Crete is probably in the neighborhood of about 2ish, depending on the mix. The APEX Block system gets around the poor structural strength of EPS-Crete by filling the cores with rebar and pored concrete, but that reduces the R-value too, so it would even benefit from an additional layer of insulation between it and the thermal mass inside, if one was building for an extreme climate.

There's a pretty good description of some of these concepts at https://www.thenaturalhome.com/ , among several others.


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## Allen15 (Apr 18, 2013)

I just had a real warm-fuzzy idea - a double-thick APEX Block wall with an interior concrete-filled cinder block wall, for what is likely to be some truly awesome thermal performance!

Keep in mind, I'm designing for and planning for building a retirement home in a pretty remote area of Alaska, so extreme cold would be a normal way of life in season, although that idea would perform well anywhere in any climate...


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## dirtman (Sep 15, 2011)

I have never used an apex block but have built several ICF houses and really like them. They proved a little too expensive for most people here though. The Apex block is similar and I think anyone could build with that or with ICF's The main thing is that the footing be dead level before you start the walls. I don't mean pretty close. If you start level then its like building with legos.


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## tparriett (Jul 2, 2013)

http://www.apexblock.com/video






Thank you for your interest in the APEX Block Building System, and opportunity to work with you.

I have attached a few links that will give you additional details. The first link is for Designing Spaces which aired November 14th. You can fast forward about 15 minutes and you will see the segment on APEX Block

Thanks again for your interest in our building system. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

********************************************************************************************************

Block is a lightweight, highly energy efficient block, and a green alternative to stick frame. Listed below are just a few of the qualities that the APEX Block offers:

Â· The building system is fire resistant tested to 4 hours at 2000 degrees.

Â· It is energy efficient with a lab test thermal value of R52 and uses up to 60% less energy to heat and cool.

Â· In sound conductive test, the APEX walls were 65% quieter than insulated framed walls.

Â· It is environmentally correct and sustainable.

Â· 30% quicker to build than similar monolithic blocks

Â· Light weight at only 51 lbs. interlocking system.

Â· Flexible and can be architecturally easy to design with for multiple uses.

Take a look and let me know what you think and I will follow-up with you in a week or so to see if you have any interest in learning more.

http://video.o2mediainc.com/videolib/2012/QRM/Segments/100140/

http://www.apexblock.com/video

Link to our Lifetime Network television

http://www.designingspaces.tv/

Link to our product engineering guide,

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52383073/New Engineering Guide.pdf

Link to our product training manual,

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/52383073/Training Guide (Sales-HP's conflicted copy 2011-12-06).pdf

Link to our previous Lifetime Network television airing,

http://www.designingspaces.tv/show_segment.php?id=981

Link to our current ICC report,

http://www.icc-es.org/reports/pdf_files/ICC-ES/ESR-1770.pdf
Do not hesitate to contact me directly if you have additional questions. My information is below.
-- 



Teresa Parriett | APEX Block

Chief Executive Assistant

268 Akin Lane | Roseburg, Oregon 97471

Tel: (541) 430-7808 | Fax: (866) 936-4534

Email: [email protected] | Website: www.apexblock.com


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## hippie (Aug 21, 2012)

Like dirtman said very important to have footing as level as possible. You can make up a little on your first course (row) of block. But very very important that you get the first course perfectly plum and level. Then the rest should snap together.


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