ICF stands for insulated concrete forms. The forms are made of two pieces of insulation connected by webbing. The two pieces of insulation remain in place after the pour (of concrete) to act as insulation for the structure.
When we first considered building and we were thinking seriously about a dome home we thought building an ICF basement and placing the dome on top made sense (I was insisting that a full basement is necessary in New England). We then started thinking about doing ICF for the whole structure. We briefly debated using SIPS but ICF are not as heavy to manipulate (in fact our children enjoyed pushing a form around the house that we were given as sample from AMVIC, the VT ICF company we are working with). This increases the aspects of the job we can complete ourselves - something that is very important to us.
ICF seems more "green" - AMVIC is a small local company shipping in very lightweight product, 2/3 of the concrete material is coming from VT or nearby Canada, and the resulting structure will be very very well insulated.
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