Pre cast concrete homes???

[sikwhiskey]

Anyone ever built a house out of precast, pre stressed concrete?
I know they use it for building multi story apartments/sky scrapers the only pre cast house I can find in alberta is a duplex built by Lafarge in Edmonton for habitat for humanity. R44 walls R80 roof, no wood used in construction, fire proof, wind proof etc.
Going to be building a house in spring, already looked into ICF, would rather use pre cast forms. Looking for Thoughts, experience, ideas etc.
Was thinking 3 level including basement , 30'x30' square home with attached garage, concrete floors and roof, nothing to fancy lol

[Cowtown guy]

Originally Posted by sikwhiskey

Anyone ever built a house out of precast, pre stressed concrete?
I know they use it for building multi story apartments/sky scrapers the only pre cast house I can find in alberta is a duplex built by Lafarge in Edmonton for habitat for humanity. R44 walls R80 roof, no wood used in construction, fire proof, wind proof etc.
Going to be building a house in spring, already looked into ICF, would rather use pre cast forms. Looking for Thoughts, experience, ideas etc.
Was thinking 3 level including basement , 30'x30' square home with attached garage, concrete floors and roof, nothing to fancy lol

R 44 walls with no wood? Something doesn't make sense. What do they insulate? Or do you just mean no exterior wood construction?

[FreeLantz]

Originally Posted by sikwhiskey

Anyone ever built a house out of precast, pre stressed concrete?
I know they use it for building multi story apartments/sky scrapers the only pre cast house I can find in alberta is a duplex built by Lafarge in Edmonton for habitat for humanity. R44 walls R80 roof, no wood used in construction, fire proof, wind proof etc.
Going to be building a house in spring, already looked into ICF, would rather use pre cast forms. Looking for Thoughts, experience, ideas etc.
Was thinking 3 level including basement , 30'x30' square home with attached garage, concrete floors and roof, nothing to fancy lol

I don't know of anyone that has done it but I'm familiar with thre idea. I worked in the concrete industry for 6 years, including doing custom pre-cast mold fabrication. I know the owner of one of the smaller pre cast companies in edmonton, but hes a very forward thinking guy with all kinds of ingenuity. I worked for his dad as well at a major pre cast company, those folks know their concrete. I would be willing to bet he would figure it out for you, or point you in the right direction at least. It would be expensive though, because I doubt he owns molds for these panels. They would have to be built or bought, adding to the expense. And hes super busy all the time.

Pm me if you'd like his info.

Also for insulation they use hollow panels and fill them with styrofoam. Incredibly efficient actually.

[Hunter65]

The point of precast is to reproduce the same item over and over many times, thereby reducing costs of forming, and getting a quality product every time. If you want to precast a house, or any other "one of a kind" item, you may as well cast it in place because the set up cost will be prohibitive. Doubt there is a cost savings, but there will certainly be a quality gain. Precasting concrete in a plant environment is better than casting in place - controlled temperature, environment, etc. makes for a better product. If you are set on a precast house, go for it. But it won't be cheap.

I am quite involved in the precast industry, and have yet to see a precast house being produced. What you might be talking about are things like "Insul-core", and "Hollow-core". Google them for more info, but they are generally used in commercial buildings. These are Lafarge products, but most precasters have their own similar system.

I like the ICF idea, makes total sense, considering that concrete has a high thermal mass, meaning that it has no R value to speak of, but temperature fluctuations are minimized due to its mass. This is why log buildings are warm as well, not much R value, but takes a long time to cool off. Throw warm insulation out in the snowbank and it will be cold in seconds. Throw a warm log or block of concrete in the snow and it will take time to cool off.

Either way, with a precast house you will certainly get a fine product, but it will be costly.

[7 REM MAG]

R44? that seems a little extreme.A standard 2x4 wall is r12. One big thing to take into consideration is the fact that your precast walls for a 3 story building will likely be 8" thick instead of the 3.5" thick. so if you do the math and use a framed wall of the same thickness you get R28. now is the additional costs really worth it if you can use double 2x4 walls and have r28 walls?
Another cost to consider is sheer cost of the walls, concrete is expensive regardless of who you are, even for if you own the batch plant concrete still costs money, now walls like that would likely be poured with a 20 mpa concrete, im not sure what standard price is on that but on my account with lafarge i would pay $195/meter. now on an 8" thick wall you get 50 sq ft per meter so basically cost on only the concrete is $200/5'x10' piece of wall vs $3.00/stud.
Another factor is sheer weight of the walls, how your going to move them to site and how your going to move them around once they're on site. Standard concrete weighs 5000lbs/meter. now one meter will produce 50 sq ft of 8" thick wall and 75 sq ft of 6" thick wall. So for your 3 story tall 30x30 bldg you are looking at 3600 sq ft of wall, with 8" thick walls you're looking at 360,000lbs worth of concrete that you are going to have to pay to have trucked to your location, and then pay to have a mobile crane come to your site and stand for you, neither of these are cheap.
Another factor that is kind of tied into the above factor is the additional load applied to your foundation and the costs incurred by building a foundation to hold up a concrete house, this will also drastically increase your price tag as many more and likely pilings will be needed.
Ive been in the concrete business for quite a while and i can honestly say that unless you get the concrete for free the benefits will be far outweighed by the massive costs that precast walls will bring.

[Grizzly Adams]

Half a dozen built in Olds I know of. Think they were done in a local shop about 30 years ago. Tough to tell from all the others on the block unless you know. Not one of those slummy neighborhoods either. Very basic rectangular box bungalow construction with molded stone fronts. Wouldn't be worthwhile to do on a one off basis is my thinking. Popular third world building technique and I wouldn't be surprised if the builder belonged to some missionary organization that was experimenting with the process. No shortage of those around here.
Grizz

[sikwhiskey]

Here is the link to Lafarge
http://www.lafarge-na.com/wps/portal...981567352/CSEN

I was hoping to offset some costs by not using siding, dry wall, paint or shingles, heated-polished concrete floors, as well as lower utility bills. I like the look of just crete. Its being built out of town, so I don't care about aesthetics, keep it simple lol. Could build a suite in the basement too for extra income.
^^^This place also went up in 2 days, a lot of workers though. My price range for just the house is $300k
Was hoping someone already has the forms with insulation and utility conduits already in place. I'm going to contact Lafarge and look into cost. Might be to pricey, but I really like the Idea of having a "Climate"/ fire proof house, resistant to rot, flooding, wind, bombs, hail, tornadoes, break ins etc.
Thanks for the tips guys, might be chasing a pipe dream and have to go to ICF at + 2-8% the cost of "match stick" housing. One can dream though.

[7 REM MAG]

another option you could look into would be tilt up walls, basically they're precast walls poured flat on your basement slab and then stood up with a crane. would essentially eliminate the cost of transporting the precast walls to site and the cost of having one off walls built by a pre-cast company. the process of tilt-up is fairly simple, pour your basement slab and then form your walls on your slab,instal rebar and have your electrician run his conduits and boxes, etc for where they will need to be located in the walls. if you get some poly that is 20' wide you can lay that on your slab before starting the formwork or any other work and it will prevent the 2 pieces of concrete from becoming bonded together and it will also give your walls a polished finish. You can also prestress the walls with the tilt up method giving you the added strength your looking for.
If you went with this method and did the majority of the prep and form work yourself you would also save a fair bit of money. Standard rate for a concrete crew to place and finish your walls should be no more than $1.50/ sq ft. and should likely be closer to $1.00/ sq ft.
20' lengths of 10 mm rebar is $4.35, 20 mpa concrete is $200.00/meter, roll of poly is $100, formwork would be roughly $250 and would be reusable. I ran some rough numbers real quick and you would be looking at appx $5200 per wall( price calculated for 30x30 walls) that should include concrete,rebar,concrete pump, poly, form work, and labor for a concrete crew to pour your walls. this price is also based on "in town" rates as i dont know where you are located and was calculated with my companies price for material.

[crete012@gmail.com]

Did you guys ever get anywhere with finding a Precaster.

[J0HN_R1]

Holy thread revival !!!

I worked for LaFarge and poured those precast panels at a couple different buildings in the Calgary area, but they weren't stressed and were definitely custom forms.

The OP probably realized ICF was the way to go...

Below-grade basement & 2 stories insulated concrete, stick-frame roof with Spray-Foam insulation on anything wood, don't look back.

[sikwhiskey]

I went with ICF. Started in October 2016. No luck on pre cast. Ran a power side vented Resnor 65000 btu garage heater through a basement window sheathed with plywood all winter, even in -25 c house was warm. +10 2nd story, 15c main, 21c basement. Wood roof and floors unfortunatly...... Oh well very happy with it so far, just finished spraying on the paint.

[sikwhiskey]

Had to pull a $200 permit to run temp heat in county of Lethbridge. No permit required if I wanted to use a propane blower and gas everyone that came in the house, safety first and all my ass. Need a permit to say my ass apparently, but clean work environment all winter, and lots of elbow grease, I'll be moving in late June. Garage heater that got got me through the winter will go in my garage lol.

[Mangosteen]

http://www.yourhome.gov.au/materials/rammed-earth

There is a guy building his 5000 square foot trophy Museum from hunting on the shores of Lake Okanagan at Lighthouse Landing using Rammed Earth.
It's a two story building. Walked by it yesterday after the Mother's Day pic nic and the walls are going up.

Anyone try rammed Earth over there?

Here is a dude making rammed Earth on the west coast.

http://www.rammedearth.info/