Ali and Connie Ehteshami, of White Hall, stand in front of their nearly completed house that has a foundation of Styrofoam-like forms filled with concrete. (Photo by Steve Ruark)
No huffin' or puffin' can blow this house down
Couple uses styrofoam-like forms for foundation
By Pat van den Beemt
pvdb@comcast.net
Posted 9/30/08
When Ali and Connie Ehteshami bought Don’s Place, a liquor store and restaurant on Old York Road in White Hall, four years ago, they hoped to attract lots of attention.
While their business, renamed Stella’s, is doing well, they drew some unwanted notice last year when their adjacent house was destroyed in a fire.
And what’s stopping traffic these days is the new house they’re building.
It is made out of Styrofoam-like forms that are filled with steel and concrete.
“I call it my Lego house,” Connie said. “When they brought the forms in, they just started putting them together like kids’ Legos. We have people stopping here all the time to look at the house. They even ask if they can walk through it.”
The Ehteshamis picked the unique construction for several reasons: It is fire-resistant and hurricane-proof up to winds of 150 mph. With an insulation factor of R-50, they hope to save on energy bills.
(The R value is a measure of resistance to heat flow or heat loss. The bigger the number, the more effective the insulation. The R value of a standard 2-foot-by-6-foot insulated wall is around R-19, according to HandyCanadian.com.)
“These houses cost two to six percent more than a traditional house, but customers more than make up the difference in their energy savings,” said Randy Reichart, operations manager for Hanover Concrete, which sells the plastic-foam form system made by Arxx, a Canadian company.
The forms are almost a foot deep, with reinforced steel in their cores. After they were assembled by Jeff Weaver of Walnut Burl Construction in Thomasville, Pa., he poured cement into a six-inch cavity in the middle of each block. The exterior will be finished with siding.
Ali and Connie Ehteshami, and their sons, David, 26, and Dominic, 24, hope to move into the 4,000-square-foot house by Christmas.
They’ll heat the house with propane and expect to see much lower heating bills than with their traditional wood frame house.
Energy savings with this type of construction are almost too good to be true, said Bob Bollinger, who built a similar house in Reisterstown nine years ago.
He said he has a 1,000-gallon propane tank and can run his house for a year — heat, hot water heater, oven — with just one tank.
“I was using so little that my propane dealer thought the reason he wasn’t filling it up as often is that I was buying propane cheaper from somebody else,” said Bollinger, who owns ABC Radiator in Baltimore. “In my opinion, these houses ought to be mandatory.”
Bollinger bought the insulated concrete form building system materials from a Monkton company. Lee Yost and his son, Roy Yost, own Super Block System.
The Yosts also built a green house for WJZ-TV weatherman Bob Turk in 1999. Turk learned about the cement-and-foam construction at a hurricane conference.
Turk said he would build the same house again, but would make it greener by adding solar panels on the roof and thermal heating in the floors.
“Despite the high cost of energy, my house still is the most efficient in the neighborhood, running probably about 25 to 30 percent lower utility bills all year long.” Turk said in an e-mail. “It’s a very tight house.”
Right now, Lee and Roy Yost are spending their time in areas hard hit by hurricanes Hanna and Ike. Roy Yost left on Monday to meet with government officials on Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean.
“The beauty of this type of construction is that you can take somebody with little experience and train them to do it,” said Lee Yost. “The bottom line is that this construction is superior to anything made with building blocks or wood.”
While their business, renamed Stella’s, is doing well, they drew some unwanted notice last year when their adjacent house was destroyed in a fire.
And what’s stopping traffic these days is the new house they’re building.
It is made out of Styrofoam-like forms that are filled with steel and concrete.
“I call it my Lego house,” Connie said. “When they brought the forms in, they just started putting them together like kids’ Legos. We have people stopping here all the time to look at the house. They even ask if they can walk through it.”
The Ehteshamis picked the unique construction for several reasons: It is fire-resistant and hurricane-proof up to winds of 150 mph. With an insulation factor of R-50, they hope to save on energy bills.
(The R value is a measure of resistance to heat flow or heat loss. The bigger the number, the more effective the insulation. The R value of a standard 2-foot-by-6-foot insulated wall is around R-19, according to HandyCanadian.com.)
“These houses cost two to six percent more than a traditional house, but customers more than make up the difference in their energy savings,” said Randy Reichart, operations manager for Hanover Concrete, which sells the plastic-foam form system made by Arxx, a Canadian company.
The forms are almost a foot deep, with reinforced steel in their cores. After they were assembled by Jeff Weaver of Walnut Burl Construction in Thomasville, Pa., he poured cement into a six-inch cavity in the middle of each block. The exterior will be finished with siding.
Ali and Connie Ehteshami, and their sons, David, 26, and Dominic, 24, hope to move into the 4,000-square-foot house by Christmas.
They’ll heat the house with propane and expect to see much lower heating bills than with their traditional wood frame house.
Energy savings with this type of construction are almost too good to be true, said Bob Bollinger, who built a similar house in Reisterstown nine years ago.
He said he has a 1,000-gallon propane tank and can run his house for a year — heat, hot water heater, oven — with just one tank.
“I was using so little that my propane dealer thought the reason he wasn’t filling it up as often is that I was buying propane cheaper from somebody else,” said Bollinger, who owns ABC Radiator in Baltimore. “In my opinion, these houses ought to be mandatory.”
Bollinger bought the insulated concrete form building system materials from a Monkton company. Lee Yost and his son, Roy Yost, own Super Block System.
The Yosts also built a green house for WJZ-TV weatherman Bob Turk in 1999. Turk learned about the cement-and-foam construction at a hurricane conference.
Turk said he would build the same house again, but would make it greener by adding solar panels on the roof and thermal heating in the floors.
“Despite the high cost of energy, my house still is the most efficient in the neighborhood, running probably about 25 to 30 percent lower utility bills all year long.” Turk said in an e-mail. “It’s a very tight house.”
Right now, Lee and Roy Yost are spending their time in areas hard hit by hurricanes Hanna and Ike. Roy Yost left on Monday to meet with government officials on Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean.
“The beauty of this type of construction is that you can take somebody with little experience and train them to do it,” said Lee Yost. “The bottom line is that this construction is superior to anything made with building blocks or wood.”
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