Concrete Homes stand up under pressure

When the weather report warns of an impending hurricane, whose house will you hole up in? If you live in a traditional wood- or steel-framed house, you might want to find a friend with a concrete-framed home and offer a year’s supply of batteries and bottled water in exchange for safe abode during the storm.

Hurricane Warning
Particularly if you’re new to the area, it might be easy to assume that the Triangle is far enough inland to not be affected by these storms. But hurricanes can pose a deadly threat to life, limb and property, even here. Just ask anyone who was here for Hurricane Fran in 1996—a storm that caused $3.2 billion in damage.

In tests conducted by the Wind Engineering Research Center at Texas Tech University, the impact resistance of concrete walls was compared to that of conventional wood- and steel-framed walls. Fifteen-pound wood studs were launched from an air cannon toward the various walls at speeds topping 100 miles per hour. Only the concrete was strong enough and massive enough to resist the impact.

“We’ve also had that demonstrated in the Carolinas by use of a similar air cannon, at Clemson University, in the civil engineering department,” says Paul LaVene, president of the Carolinas Concrete Masonry Association, the nonprofit trade association representing the concrete block industry. “The concrete masonry walls performed very well.”

WIND AND WATER
“Outside of windows and doors, the exterior wall framing system—the masonry wall framing system—virtually is indestructible in terms of being penetrated by windborne debris,” says LaVene.
Of course, a hurricane is not just about wind—it’s also about water. Concrete construction doesn’t allow moisture in the same way a wood-framed house does. And even if water does get into the house, it doesn’t cause nearly as much damage as it would for a wood-framed house.

“Once the water recedes,” says LaVene, “you don’t have the wood building material that has gotten wet that will create mold and mildew. In a lot of homes, when the water recedes, the sheetrock and the wood and everything is so wet that even though the house stood up, you have to now tear it down to get rid of all the moisture and the problems there.”

CONCRETE OPTIONS
Palladium Homes and Bost Construction are two builders in the Triangle area using concrete masonry—meaning that they build with concrete blocks, layering them the same way as bricks. Rufty Homes uses a poured-concrete system.

Fay Block Materials in Fayetteville supplies many of the local builders. The company makes its blocks locally from processed bottom ash, leftover from electricity production. “The major benefit we’ve got right now [over other raw materials] is that our product is a post-industrial product,” says Larry Little, president. “It’s a ‘green’ material because of what it’s made of.”

Palladium Homes uses reinforcing steel, or rebar, running horizontally and vertically through its concrete block system. The rebar is fixed into place with concrete in about 40 percent of the wall, and with expanding foam in the other 60 percent.

Bost Construction adds four-inch wood-framed walls on the interior for wiring, plumbing, and additional insulation. “This also allows us to set the windows and doors inside the masonry, creating deeper shadow lines and better protection. The weight of the floors and the roof are being carried by the structure of the masonry,” says Rex Bost, president. “In the regular wood-framed house, all the loads are actually carried by the wood.”

Rufty Homes’ approach is different: “The concrete method that we use is one where the entire structure—all the exterior walls, the interior structural wall and the floor system, including the attic floor—is steel-reinforced and poured in place,” says Jon Rufty, president.

No matter which type of concrete construction is used, it’s worth considering just for the safety aspects alone. “Wind—when you see a storm like Katrina—it can just be absolutely devastating. And most people never even think about it during the design of a house, but it’s so easy to think about at the design and construction stage,” says Rufty.

While most of the newer concrete homes in the Triangle are million-dollar homes, Palladium Homes President Greg Messer is eager to get the word out that concrete masonry works for smaller or mid-sized homes as well. “We don’t differentiate or change methods just because it’s a luxury, expensive home—it’s built exactly the same way.”

BEAUTIFUL INSIDE AND OUT
You don’t have to sacrifice aesthetics to get a home this safe and sound. Designs range from traditional to transitional, Colonial to contemporary, manor to Mediterranean, and everything in between. “You’ve got homes now that, unless you saw it being built, you’d never know it was masonry,” says Little. Homes are finished on the exterior and interior with the same materials as conventionally framed homes.

Stucco, however, is probably the most popular exterior choice. Having always been a big fan of European architecture, Bost says the look a concrete home can have was a big reason he got started in concrete masonry. “This gave us the opportunity to do real cement stucco,” he says. “It’s applied directly over masonry. You don’t have the moisture and other problems you had with the synthetic stucco.”

Interior finishes include the usual sheetrock or gypsum board. “A concrete masonry home, when it’s finished out, it’s going to look like any other traditional home in a neighborhood,” says LaVene.

OTHER BENEFITS
An incredibly strong house, with a beautiful interior and exterior—what more could a homeowner want?  “Because concrete houses are solid, they are noticeably quieter,” says Rufty. “When you walk across the dining room, no longer do you hear the rattle of the china. When people are walking or running upstairs, it doesn’t echo through the house.”

The concrete masonry frame “envelope,” as LaVene calls it, creates a stabilized interior environment in terms of temperature as well. “It could mean as much as a fifty percent reduction in operation costs for heating and cooling as compared to a traditional wood-framed house.”

That’s even more substantial when you realize that the cost of building a concrete masonry home is really only about three to five percent more than the cost of building a brick home.
There’s one group that does have a problem with concrete homes, though: “Termites,” says LaVene. “They don’t like us. Termites don’t digest concrete very well.”  Mold doesn’t find a food source in concrete either, meaning fewer allergy triggers as opposed to in a wood-framed home.

Concrete is a trend that’s here to stay. “There’s plenty of literature, there’s plenty of data, more and more that’s coming out every day,” says Little. “It’s already proven in other areas.”
“It’s an idea that—you know—it’s time.”

Karen Rhodes is a freelance writer