A CONCRETE decision

By BRIAN PRINCE
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
Albert Lardo wanted a house with walls that could withstand anything, from cold weather to strong winds to earthquakes. He believes he now has it in a large brick Georgian-style home that just might be on the cutting edge of construction technology.
Welcome to the house that Polysteel built.
Beyond its size -- 7,200 square feet -- the house looks fairly similar to other new homes in Murrysville, Pa. But inside, it's completely different, with walls made from reinforced concrete, high-density expanded polystyrene and galvanized steel.
The building blocks of the Polysteel system are the steel-reinforced foam forms. After they are stacked and braced, concrete is poured into the forms, creating a thick barrier inside the blocks.
Jason Lardo, Connie and Albert Lardo's son, is the home's builder and a local franchise owner for American Polysteel of Albuquerque, N.M.
"Right now, we're at the starting point, because it still hasn't really taken off yet," he said. "I think in the future, everything will be built like this."
Bulletproof: The Lardos have no doubts about the strength of the home's walls. Jason fired a rifle into one of the filled Polysteel forms just to see how much damage it would cause.
"It went in a few inches and just stopped," his father said.
As a former developer, Albert Lardo knows something about home construction. While he has no need to build a bulletproof house, he says the concrete walls provide him with extra protection against high winds.
Polysteel walls are two to four times stronger than the maximum design wind load mandated by the U.S. Uniform Building Code, the company says. In addition, American Polysteel says that independent tests have shown that Polysteel walls can withstand damage from debris flying at speeds of close to 250 mph.
It also can withstand fire and noise.
"Someone could be outside shooting a .45 and it would sound like a cap gun," said Albert Lardo. An exaggeration perhaps, but 100 feet behind Lardo's house, construction crews were busy building a new home. From inside, the rumble of the machinery seemed much more distant.
In case of fire, the inner layer of concrete keeps the fire from spreading.
Insulation: But the biggest advantage of Polysteel over traditional stick-built homes is probably insulation value. Wood-framed walls can be anywhere from R-11 to R-19, depending on the type and thickness of insulation added during or after construction. Polysteel walls, on the other hand, have an R-value of 26-30, mostly because of the polystyrene layers. When the system's reduced air infiltration is factored in, the R-value can be as high as 50.
This past winter, when natural gas prices skyrocketed, Lardo said his gas bill went from an average of $250 a month to no higher than $350, including the garage and a large indoor pool that has sides also made with Polysteel. A 120,000-British thermal unit boiler handles water and the radiant heating system that serves the basement and first floor. The second floor has hot-air heat supplied by a 50,000-Btu furnace in the attic.
During the summer, the house's electric bill averages $120 month, Lardo said. Air conditioning is supplied by a single 3-ton condensing unit next to the garage.
Costs: The higher cost of Polysteel is one downside. According to the company, the average cost of a Polysteel-built home is $104,000 vs. $100,000 for a stick-built home. But as Lardo noted, there are savings inherent in the system.
"In a wood house, you would have to bring in guys to insulate the walls," he said. "So the price in the end is about the same."
And when you factor in the energy savings, a Polysteel house is cheaper to maintain, he added.
Lardo's house is hardly the average home. Though he declined to say how much it cost to build, it has been appraised at $800,000, which reflects the 10 acres he bought along with it.
In addition to the indoor pool, the house has many luxury extras. A deck stretches across the entire rear of the house, accessible to the kitchen and the family room through sets of French doors.
The house also has four bedrooms and five and a half baths, all sheathed in 16-by-11-by-48-inch blocks impervious to wind, earthquakes and bullets.