| Birmingham -- If you've ever bought coffee from a fast food place, then you're familiar with polystyrene foam -- better known as Styrofoam. And while it does a great job keeping that coffee hot -- you might be surprised to learn the material those cups are made of can be put to use in a much larger way.
"That's a 16th of an inch of what we're building this house out of."
Hoot Haddock is the founder and owner of Thermasave homes, an Alabama business that designs and builds houses out of foam panels just inches thick.
The foam is cut to size and then two sheets of cement board are glued to either side of it, sandwiching the foam inside. Again, Hoot Haddock.
"You can get it as thick as you want it and it works just exactly like plywood or OSB. There's only fasteners every four feet and at the top and bottom we don't have, you know like the stick built structures you've got to every sixteen inches you've gotta have a row of nails, so we just have them every four feet where the panels tie together."
Putting up a foam house is like putting up a giant puzzle. The panels -- which can be as tall as 12 feet -- are labeled to make sure they're put up in the right order, hoisted into place and connected using special fasteners. It only takes about a week to get the house up. Haddock says that's much different from the traditional building method, which requires builders to put up a wooden frame before doing anything else and can take months to complete.
Ed Bondurant is an architect who collaborates with Haddock. He's built a foam house for himself. On the outside, it looks like any other on the street -- it's painted blue with large windows and has a long, slanted roof. The inside is stunning ... with high ceilings, a modern kitchen and hard wood floors.
Anything exposed to the elements at all, be it floor, roof or wall, was constructed using the Styrofoam panels -- to take advantage of their insulating qualities. And, even though it's a cool winter morning, Bondurant says he doesn't have the heat up very high.
"You'll find that you'll get somewhat of a flywheel affect because that foam tends to store heat, like during the day when the sun's shining, on it and then that would give you heat during the night. It stays about the same temperature in here all the time."
That ability to retain heat, as well as the foam's ability to keep a house cool in warm weather, is just one of the reasons the Federation of American Scientists -- or F.A.S. -- thinks the foam could go a long way toward solving the affordable housing crisis here in the United States. Rachel Jagoda is the Project Manager for Housing Technology for the F.A.S.
"And that's where these new technologies come in because not only do they save money off the bat, but they also save the homeowner money through the entire life cycle of the home."
Haddock says one family who built a 22-hundred square foot home out of the panels is saving quite a bit on heating bills, shelling out only about 30 dollars a month to cover expenses. But Haddock and the F.A.S. say energy efficiency isn't the only place a homeowner can save money with a foam house.
Jagoda says the cost of constructing a 15-hundred square foot home using the traditional, stick frame technology costs about 55-thousand dollars. That same building, she says, would cost about 10-thousand dollars less if built with foam panels. That's because they require no lumber and the construction time is much shorter.
But many builders think that extra time putting up what's called a "stick frame" house is worth the effort and expense because traditional houses are safer. They contend foam houses may not be sturdy enough to withstand hazards like earthquakes and tornadoes. But Haddock has complete confidence in his houses.
"Built my first house in 1984, my daughter still lives in it, and it's in Alaska where we have the most earthquakes, we have more than in California, the highest winds in the country and, of course, we've got the heaviest snow loads. It's performing perfectly, there's no problems with it, it's been performing perfectly for 20 years."
To back up Haddock's claims, the Federation of American scientists plans on running a number of tests to gauge the material's sturdiness.
In the meantime, some are exploring the use of this building technology in developing countries. Government officials from Senegal recently visited a Thermasave plant to see the technology for themselves. They're working on a national program to provide affordable housing to their citizens. Hoot Haddock, the owner of Thermasave, says while the foam may help with Senegal's housing problem, it could also help put people to work.
"We can go and put a plant there and use people in that country to make the panels and train 'em how to put 'em up. It is much simpler to do. The panels come with a number on 'em with all the windows and doors cut. You just put them where they go."
An architect with an international charity has designed a two-room foam house for use in Afghanistan, where many homes were destroyed in the decades of war there and also by earthquakes.
Jagoda says the F.A.S., with help from the U.S. Department of Energy, hopes to begin building foam houses in that country in the next year or so. But they could run into a problem because the foam houses look nothing like the traditional Afghan house. Jagoda says her group is looking for ways to make the houses blend in.
"In Afghanistan what they have used for thousands of years is adobe bricks to construct their homes. And those are incredibly unsafe in earthquakes. But if you have a panel home with some stucco coating it actually looks pretty close on the outside and inside to an adobe home."
But the F.A.S. and Energy Department aren't just pushing the use of foam panels overseas. They'd like to see more homeowners build their houses out of the material here in the states. So, they plan on building a demonstration home in Houston in the coming year.
-- Rosemary Pennington, December 31, 2004
