Concrete Reasons To Be Walled In Cement
By Dawson Mills

Here's one you can cast in stone: the concrete house is part of the future of home building.

But it isn't like any concrete structure you're seen before, or might imagine.  Constructed using stacked, hollow forms of expanded polystyrene and steel, concrete is poured into the forms and reinforced with steel bars (rebar) both horizontally and vertically.

The polystyrene is left in place, providing insulation.  The interior and exterior walls can be finished with any material desired.

If you think "bunker" or flat-roofed cinder block shack when you hear concrete, think again.  On a recent visit to the concrete house under construction for Homearama '96, in the South Shore Estates section of Virginia Beach, it took two passes down the street to pick it out from the others.  Only the polystyrene "insulation" gave it away.

"When the home is completed," says builder T. Reid Pocock, Jr., a principal with Dominion Building Group, Inc., "the only way you can tell it's a concrete house is the window sills are wider, because of the wider walls.  Some builders incorporate some of them into window seats.  Most buyers consider the window sills a plus."

The technology originated about 25 years ago, according to Pocock, when a Canadian engineer watched his daughter play with wet sand and a Styrofoam cup on the beach.  Originally used for below-grade applications (basements), in the last 10 or 15 years it has been employed in above-ground applications, in residential and commercial construction.