Prefab housing info for May 30, 2007

May 2007

ICF buildings systems

Posted by Peter on May 30, 2007 at 12:19 p.m.

Michael van Meter

I received an email from my friend/colleague Michael van Meter the other day. He and other volunteers are building homes in Armenia for charity using a unique pseudo-prefab building process:

"The goal of the people I am working with is basically to revolutionize the affordable housing market in the 3rd world. We are here in Armenia to build 2 houses on a site administered by a group called ARDA (Armenian Relief and Development Agency). This is an NGO started by an LA businessman by the name of Steve Lazarian. He has spent 17 years and millions of his own dollars here trying to help the Armenian people progress from the conditions that prevail here after the demise of the Soviet Union...

One of the things that is desperately needed here is some type of affordable (and quickly constructed) quality housing. Enter my pal George who has many years of building expertise and has a heart for the poor of the world....George has been studying a product called Kiva Block for a couple of years now and has come up with a design that makes this product potentially viable. Kiva is made of Styrofoam of all things and goes together rather like Lego blocks. Think of a concrete block (CMU) that is 12 in high, 8 in thick and 48 in long....It is inexpensive, strong and quick. We have been working here 9 days now and are putting the roof on the first building and are going to start the roof on the 2nd tomorrow...pretty fast for a 2 bedroom 650 sf dwelling eh?

So anyway here we are setting a land speed record at building houses and perhaps there is a market for this thing in the world..."

I've seen products like the Kiva Block before, so I did some research. The generic term for such products is Insulating Concrete Forms. Builders assemble the (usually) styrofoam forms into walls on site; concrete is then poured into the forms, which are left in place. The form acts as a quick and precise way to form a wall, AND as the wall's insulation. A durable exterior finish is required; ICF homes "will accept any traditional exterior finish including vinyl or wood siding, stucco and brick." Interior finishes match those of typical construction. This page has countless photos of different ICF products and processes.

Thanks Michael!

Update: By coincidence, ICF receives good coverage in the June issue of Residential Design & Build Magazine (hat tip: Materialicious).

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Tags: method small inexpensive process charity relief housing

"Prefab homes" on Google Hot Trends

Posted by Peter on May 30, 2007 at 9:13 a.m.

google.com/trends/

On May 24th, the search "prefab homes" ranked 100 on Google Hot Trends, "a list of the current top 100 fastest-rising Google search queries in the U.S." That's A LOT of searches...

Update: After some research, it seems that much of what shows up on google hot trends comes from daily crossword puzzles (that's why the entries seem so strange sometimes). But, a quick search didn't turn up the clue "prefab homes" on any crossword puzzles for the date.

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