Cement Block House

[ajharris]

Hi Yall. Have any of yall ever built a concrete block house? My DH and I are thinking about building one with a full basement. The problem is neither of us have ever done anything like this. What are the pros and cons? Is it cheaper this way? Please help!!!!!


Amanda

[Ruby]

Check out this link.

http://www.texasmusicforge.com/gimmeshelter.html

[fantasymaker]

It depends.
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.Ok ya gotta say more about your situation!

[Farmer Willy]

They're solid. Harder to run electric. Won't rot. If I couldn't have a log structure I'd be happy with a stucco covered block house.

[Westwood]

Fill the block cavities with sand for thermal mass, insulate it on the outside, stucco over and ground temperature will wick up from underneath. Much easier to heat and cool!

[gobug]

AJ, I don't know "where the red fern grows." If you are anywhere north, wicking will go the wrong direction. You will be heating the earth. If the ground is 50, it won't heat your house to 70. Your heating system will be working to warm the ground.

One great advantage to using concrete block is they are most likely made locally. I called a local manufacturer just a month ago. Since I expressed an interest in building an entire house, they gave me a contractors price. A truckload (1200) cost $1.13 each. My property is 60 miles from the factory and delivery was another $350. This is still cheaper than the big box hardware stores, and they unload the block for you.

The site posted above is excellent. Tio Ed, like you, had no experience. He and his wife built there house in TX and documented it well. He is writing a book about it, also.

I have another link if you are interested. It shows construction in the CO high country where it is much colder than TX. I couldn't find it just now, but if you are interested, I will locate it. The CO house is passive solar and doesn't need any other heat source.

As Farmer Willy said, the electric and plumbing present an extra challenge over regular construction. They are more expensive to build and insulate than stud construction.

[Ruby]

What I like about using block. You don't have to get in a hurry once you start. If your building a stick house you need to hurry and get a roof on because of the weather. With a block house you can buy the blocks a few at at time if you can't afford to buy all you need at one time. Also one or two can do it because of the small blocks. I think the largest expense to get started would be the slab. If I was going to do a block house I would want it on a concrete slab.

[Westwood]

No matter where you are, the difference between 52 degrees of ground temp and whatever you're heating and cooling against is better than 0 degrees or 90 degrees. The thermal mass will take a while to soak it up, sure. Better in southern temps for cooling, better in northern temps for heating.

[WisJim]

I am reading your message to say that you would be building a "regular" above grade house with a basement, with block walls. Friends of ours build one that was on a slab, no basement (they were in a flat sandy area with a high water table) back in the 1970s in western Wisconsin, and although I haven't visited them lately, I know that they were happy with it the first 20+ years that they were in it. They were totally off grid, 12 volt electrics with a wind generator, and wood heat. One of the nice things about masonry construction is that your building structure doesn't burn, at least not the walls. Might be an advantage in an area with lots of wild fires or in a forest where fire might be a possibility.

[Tio Ed]

Amanda:

Some great posts in this thread - you've got to love this forum.

Gobug makes a typically good point about blocks being available from local manufacturers. With the dizzying rise in building materials thanks to Katrina and China, DIY builders are going to have to look for every pricing advantage they can get. Local availability also means you can buy as you go without having to purchase (and find dry storage for) bulk building materials. A big, big plus if you're building out of cash flow.

Ruby (thanks for the nod on my website, by the way) makes the excellent point about being able to go at your own pace. We took - and needed every bit of - 3 years to get The Garage Mahal built. I didn't have to worry about tarping and dry storage with concrete blocks.

The wicking and thermal mass observations are also on point, although how these affect your design involves a lot of variables about how and where you build the house. You definitely want a well-engineered slab with as much extra reinforcement as your budget will allow. We spent $10K on our slab 3 years ago. We spent about $3K more than the cheapest bid, figuring that the extra money was well-spent on getting the best available slab guy.

We had all the construction skills you would expect a lifelong musician and an actress to have (read that as: "How far is it to the emergency room?"). The dry stack block technique is amazingly forgiving and user-friendly and flexible. It's also ideal for "pay as you go" and "one man construction crew" construction. You can't properly frame a house with lumber, stack straw bales or finish ICF by yourself. Block construction can be done with whoever is on hand, even if it's just you.

The downside of block construction: The observation about wiring/plumbing runs being tougher is accurate - you just need to be creative in how you do things. It's incredibly heavy and dirty work and you _will_ suffer some fractures and permanent flexibility loss in the process. Like anything else, there's a trade-off involved. You'll need good insulation and something like a masonry heater or outside woodburning furnace if you want to take advantage of the thermal mass properties up in the snow belt.

The recent wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma, the yearly fires out west, every time I see a trailer park tornado story, every hurricane season and every time I remember everything I saw in Mississippi right after Hurricane Katrina all reinforce my conviction that the choice to build with cement was the right way to go. That's a lot of confirmation on a constant basis.

I'm giving away all the info - and then some - that you need to DIY build for yourself on the Gimme Shelter website. My good friend Gobug is right, I'm going to be publishing what I believe to be the first new book on dry stack block construction published in the US since the late 1920s. I'll be expanding what's available for free by including detailed drawings for tools and materials we had to invent or improvise, a section of info to help you make a case with any building inspectors or permitting authorities, a lot more "how to" photos and big section called "Don't Try This At Home" which will cover our biggest screw-ups - uhhhh, I meant to say educational experiences. Needless to say, this is the kind of "real world" stuff you won't find on HGTV programs. I'll be publishing it through Texas Music Forge, my audio magazine.

In the meantime, sorry for the length of this post, thanks for your collective indulgence and I'm always glad to spread the wealth if you've got questions about who, what, how much or why.

Best regards,

Tio Ed
Austin, Texas
El Rey de Sweat Equity

[jnap31]

I built an 11 and a half by 12 foot cement block home in the marshalls with an attached plywood ext. No prior experience I eyeballed it all. I would suggest that you make sure it is all squared first it made it pretty hard to put the roof on with those dimensions. Still it ended up just fine and will still be standing a long time from now or at least till global warming washes it away as it is only 20 feet from the beach at sea level. Dont have to worry about termites with block and they stand up to hurricanes a lot better than wood that is why it is the house of choice in the tropics. I will probably build with block again in the future and maybe have a strawbale top story. with wood floors

[jnap31]

I built an 11 and a half by 12 foot cement block home in the marshalls with an attached plywood ext. No prior experience I eyeballed it all. I would suggest that you make sure it is all squared first it made it pretty hard to put the roof on with those dimensions. Still it ended up just fine and will still be standing a long time from now or at least till global warming washes it away as it is only 20 feet from the beach at sea level. Dont have to worry about termites with block and they stand up to hurricanes a lot better than wood that is why it is the house of choice in the tropics. I will probably build with block again in the future and maybe have a strawbale top story. with wood floors and an attached green house on the whole south side built from recycled glass.

[daytrader]

I find heating a brick home cheaper then a block building. BUT a block building is vary study. Running electric is easy with conduet or a finished framed inside.

Building with block will be MORE expensive then stick built, but the pay back is long term. Less maintenance and it will not rot.

I like the dea of filling the blocks with sand. This would make you heating and cooling MUCH cheaper then stick built homes.

My old brick farm house would take DAYS to heat or cool. Once heated or cooled it would stay that way for days.

It took us a bit to figure it out, but soon. It was the best thing ever. He could run the heat for 2 days. Turn it off for a day. Run the heat for two days then off for two and back on for one. In the winter this helped big time.

In the summer we woulf fry for a day or two then we were cool as ice.

[gccrook]

I'm not completely convinced that block is more expensive than stick. I am adding on to an existing stick built, so I went with stick built, and comparing the quantities of block needed to do the same size, I am not sure it would have been more expensive. Certainly would have been much harder work, but as mentioned by Tio Ed, it has its benefits. I used a modified form of drystack to create a tornado shelter/master closet.

[Tio Ed]

At the time we built our Labor O' Love, block was definitely more expensive than sticks. That was 3 years ago and before the Chinese building boom and Katrina had their effect on the building materials market. I'm not so sure that lumber prices haven't proportionately risen more than cement prices have.

If I were trying to estimate building costs right now, I'd have to take into account what I'm getting for my dollar. Cement quality is pretty consistent. I'm not sure I'd build a doghouse out of a lot of the lumber available, which frankly looks terrible in the lumberyard and in all the new construction I've walked through recently. Ye gods, I'm glad I built when I did instead of waiting.

Just my two pesos worth,

Tio Ed

[gccrook]

Yeah, I was so brght, I started getting my materials just a few weeks after Katrina, and ended up paying more than if I had purchased them before Katrina.

[JackDeePeyton]

Hey Folks......long time reader of this forum, don't post much. But, I have built a couple of garages over the years using cement blocks and to this day, both are still standing. First one was built in 78 (1st house I ever owed) and the second one was built in 86. The first time, I hired it done but the second time, decided that if those guys can do it, so can I. Was talking the other day to a friend of mine who still lives near where I built one of them and says it still looks good. I was very proud of the second one, after pouring the slab, the first 3 layers of blocks I filled with cement, very solid. If I can get him to send a picture of it, I will post it here.

Semper Fi

[gobug]

It's a little difficult to directly compare costs unless you have detailed plans for both. I got recent stud prices at the big box and calculated a cost using a single sill plate and a doubled header. I also added 2 two by fours in the corners and a layer of drywall on the outside. Without doors or windows, and considering the great discount of ordering an entire truckload of block, studs were nearly half the price. The real kicker for me is insulation. In my climate, the block must be insulated on the outside surface (R-20 is code). One site I studied used a 2x4 frame to keep the foam board insulation in place and provide a surface to attach metal lathe for the exterior finish. If you have to add a 2x4 wall outside your outside concrete block wall, the concrete block is all extra cost.

[gobug]

Westwood

You do not get the air for the house from the ground. So you are not heating from 50 degrees to 70. All hydronic heating systems insulate below the floor so you don't waste all your energy trying to heat the earth. Heat does not move from cold to warm, but the other direction. If it is zero outside and the ground is 50, your house will want to stay at 50 until you can heat the ground above 50.

There are systems that use the heat in the ground (geothermal) but a heat pump is required, and they typically go deep into the ground.

Another approach is PAHS where you make an insulation umbrella over the top of a dirt covered house. This takes at least 6 feet of soil covering the whole house and extending 20 feet beyond and covering 400 feet of heat exchanging air tubes. It also takes 3 years for the soil to raise in temperature for the house to feel comfortable.

It is common practice to put insulation under the slab of a passive solar house so the earth doesn't rob the heat from the house.

[dixiedoodle]

It is cheaper! Tho it is hotter than ****! insummer. If insulated it is warm.