There’s a 1,400-square-foot home on Juniper Place in Cortez that is being built with expanded polystyrene foam blocks.
“It reminded me of a giant YETI cooler,” said Rachael Marchbanks, Cortez’s community and economic development director.
It’s reinforced with concrete cores at each corner, around every door and window that secure it from the roof down to the foundation, said city building inspector Sean Canada.
Since foam is considered a flammable product, it’s encapsulated with stucco on the outside and modified stucco inside, Canada said.
“It doesn’t look like what most people think it’s going to look like. It looks like most every other house around,” he said.
The nontraditional new build has additionally passed all building inspections and is up to code.
The home will withstand the 115-mph wind gusts and 30-pound snow load per square foot. The blocks also have a fire retardant in them. Between that and the stucco coating, it’s nearly impossible to melt, said Randy Feuilly, the director of The Trailwood Foundation, the company building the home.
So why build with foam?
Put simply, it costs less.
Building this two-bedroom, two-bathroom home with foam costs about $60,000 less than its stick-built counterpart, Feuilly said.
The goal’s to help address the lack of affordable and workforce housing in the area with this kind of construction.
A big reason for reduced costs is the speed at which it’s constructed.
“It was just a slab Aug. 1, and now we almost have the roof on,” said Feuilly. “It’s going really quick.”
Builders can skip a lot of steps they’d take in traditional construction, Canada said.
“We don’t have the extra insulation requirements because the insulation is built into the structural materials,” said Canada. “Wiring, plumbing are essentially easier too (because) you’re not drilling through all the studs to run your wiring. They’re just channels cut into the foam.”
The home already sold. It was on the market for less than 72 hours, which says something about demand in the area, said Frank Elge, a business development director at The Trailwood Foundation.
Next door, they plan to build another foam block home, which also sold.
“It was a new build and in my price range, which is hard to find these days,” said Gina Nelson, the homebuyer. “It’s different, but worth giving a try. I’ve heard it’s super energy efficient and it’s looking great.”
The Department of Energy calls insulation with R-values of 13 to 23 sufficient in cooler climates. These foam blocks have an R-60 insulation value.
“It’s like a furnace,” Elge said. “It knows when you need to be cold or hot.”
In addition to savings on the initial cost of the home, the energy efficient foam blocks make heating and cooling more affordable down the road, Elge said.
Also, they don’t mold and insects don’t like them, Elge said.
“If you go point by point, it just beats the other,” Elge said. “We try not to go there, though. We simply say it’s less expensive to create and build.”
The Juniper Place project is working out to cost well under $200 per square foot, Feuilly said.
“From the city’s perspective, we want to help bring in and facilitate other potential methods that could decrease the cost of building and yet allow for high quality homes in our city,” Marchbanks said.
A few years ago, Feuilly and Elge reached out to show the city of Cortez what they were doing, Marchbanks said.
“It looked really solid, so we went ahead and asked our city engineer and our building officials to go and talk with them,” Marchbanks said.
Feuilly has a patent for something he named Jiffy Block, which is essentially the EPS foam blocks they’re constructing with now. Jiffy Blocks are grooved and better for building smaller houses.
So instead of using Jiffy Blocks for this build, they partnered with Phoenix-based Green Rhino Building Systems, whose foam blocks are approved nationwide and are engineered to build things up to 30 feet tall.
Green Rhino Building Systems has been building homes of foam for nearly 20 years. The house on Juniper Place is the first of its kind in the Cortez area, Feuilly said.
“It’s nontraditional, but it has been around for a while in different, various forms,” Canada said.
Elge said that after Hurricane Charley hit Sarasota, Fl., the city rebuilt a number of its homes with EPS foam technology because they’re cheaper to build with and can withstand winds of up to 200 mph. That hurricane was a category 4 storm, with winds up to 150 mph.
Feuilly and Elge hope builders will be receptive and add this kind of construction to their tool belt.
“Don’t cannibalize what you already have, but add this because of the short production time and all of the benefits,” said Elge. “It’s not all or nothing.”
The biggest drawback to building homes with foam is “probably just public conception,” Canada said.
“What people think of it doesn’t necessarily match what is actually being built,” said Canada. “So I think it may take a while for that to catch on.”
