Icestone Update

Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 2:43 pm By Ryan Brown

Many of us saw Icestone countertops in the Hyde Park home on the Cool Homes Tour last weekend.

Here is their This Old House blog post about the Icestone tub surround. Last week Apartment Therapy posted about the material and the readers provided a few more interesting details. We knew it was a mix of concrete and recycled glass (in a variety of color mixes), but Apartment Therapy added the following info:

[Icestone] received the prestigous Cradle to Cradle Silver Certification…it is as hard like granite, not porous like marble and heat resistant like stone. It can be used indoors and outdoors for countertops, flooring and backsplashes.

Another commenter posted this video showing an Icestone installation:

What’s not to like? Perhaps the price. AT reader comments suggest it can be north of $100/sqft. I checked with Ecowise, as they are one of the Icestone dealers here in Austin. They quoted me $60-$70/sqft for the material (it comes in sheets of 96″ x 52.5″). Installation cost varies based on the number of cuts, and the complexity of the design. This seems competitive with other mainstream countertop materials (granite, quartz, etc.), which generally start in the $50/sqft range.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Green Building, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Filed under Green Building, Technology

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6 Responses to “Icestone Update”

1. Matt Risinger Says:
   August 1st, 2007 at 5:50 pm

   Concrete Countertop installers can do a local version of IceStone too. I’ve used Newbold Stone in South Austin for concrete counters and they’re a great outfit. The owner John Newbold has done some cool tops with recycled glass straight from Austin’s Recycling Program. They put the recycled glass in the mix then polish it so the glass “pops” out from the smooth concrete surface. I think it’s even more “green” because you’re not trucking the materials from out of state. Concrete counters are made locally so you eliminate all that energy in getting product to Austin. If you compare that to pulling granite out of the earth in Asia then getting it to Austin the environmental impact is huge. I also like that the money is kept locally.

2. Ryan Brown Says:
   August 1st, 2007 at 7:12 pm

   Good point. It is critical to consider the embodied energy of each product. Transportation costs can make less ‘green’ local materials outperform imported high-green options. A good topic for a future post, thanks!

3. Anna Hackman Says:
   August 8th, 2007 at 11:15 am

   Great comment, Matt. I really like the concrete idea with glass that is in our own backyard. Ryan, also a great point to make about embodied energy.

   Also, everyone take a look at Enviroglas from Plano, Texas, another recycled countertop and floor material company. See http://www.enviroglasproducts.com/index.asp. Check out their new Enviromode for countertops.

   I can’t believe how much cheaper IceStone is in your area. In the northeast, I was quoted $125 and up! Plus the salesperson told me that it scratches, so it may not be for everyone. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this product and is the scratches minor like soapstone.

   I guess with any product green or otherwise do your homework and ask alot of questions to find out the pro and cons are of the material. You have to decide if can you live with the cons or be able to handle the maintence. Otherwise, you will be replacing it and how green is that?

   Consumer Reports just did a series of articles about kitchens and talked about some of the green products out there today. (Great Kitchens for Less) I enjoyed reading the articles. The articles are in their magazine not online.

   Anna Hackman http://www.green-talk.com

4. John Newbold Says:
   August 14th, 2007 at 6:26 pm

   Thanks to Matt for the ringing endorsement.

   The biggest cost factors for products like Icestone and Enviroglass is waste. The material may be $60-70 per square foot of slab, but since it comes in a slab form and much of the material is lost when it is cut and fitted for your counters, you pay for unused material at that same rate. Add that to the labor to fabricate and re-polish the cut surfaces and it climbs into the $120-150 range pretty quickly.

   Our local product can be a little less costly because our method of countertop fabrication consists of forming and pouring the amount of concrete we need for the particular piece. We dont even drill out the faucet holes, we form them as well. That efficiency works to our customer’s advantage.

   BTW, the enviroglass people are great. We actually use them as a supplier for some of our single color glass, when it is called for.

5. John Says:
   April 10th, 2008 at 10:52 am

   While IceStone and other aggregates are beautiful, there have been issues with glass composites because of the different expansion and contraction rates of glass and the matrix material. GleenGlass reclaims glass and casts it into all-glass countertops and tiles and vessels. We offer an all-glass “green” alternative that is getting favorable response from designers nationwide. Our site is http://www.gleenglass.com. Thanks!

6. Mike Says:
   October 16th, 2008 at 8:56 am

   Why is that ‘green’ products always costs much more than other products? Diet food for example. Weight watchers, Stayslim and other meals are much more than regular packages meals. These Icsstone countertops are priced outrageous. It’s one thing to go ‘green’ but another to go broke doing it. I think I’ll just keep my money thank you.

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