One thing’s for sure, termites are going to be awfully disappointed when they hear about this.
Out on High Rock Mountain, in the wilds of eastern Rowan County, J Wood is building himself a house of concrete.
Well, a house built of concrete walls, anyway.
It’s a big two-story structure — measuring about 2,500 square feet and covering a goodly portion of a steep, wooded tract less than 2 miles from the Davidson County line.
The house is still a couple of months shy of completion, but already it’s much stouter than most homes ever dreamed of being.
Its walls are built to sustain just about anything Mother Nature throws at it, including winds of 200 mph or more. In other words, the big, bad wolf is wasting his breath when he comes calling here.
“In short,” said Wood, a trim 63-year-old who in 1998 retired as a master sergeant following a 33-year Army career, “this place isn’t going anywhere.”
Not likely to, anyway.
Its construction is part of a process known by the trade name Eco-Block. It’s a relatively simple process, featuring blocks of Styrofoam snapped together to form frames for exterior walls.
Into those Styrofoam frames is poured concrete, which is reinforced by rebars — long, metal rods.
The resulting walls measure 11 inches in diameter. That’s 6 inches of concrete plus 5 inches of Styrofoam — 212 inches on the outside of the walls and another 212 inches on the inside.
Wood said he researched the Eco-Block system extensively prior to selecting it for his own home. He said the resulting walls are so stout that they make for better insulation and lower energy costs.
“It’s cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter,” Wood said of Eco-Block built houses. “The more you consider insurance and energy savings, the more this makes sense.”
How Wood came to build in rural Rowan County is an interesting story unto itself.
A native of Illinois, Wood spent most of his life traveling the world with the Army. One of his stints, in the early 1980s, took him to Central America, where he met Tom Bevier, another soldier. The two became fast friends.
Bevier retired from the military in 1994 and moved to Rowan County to live near his sister. When Bevier learned that Wood was retiring, he invited him and his wife, Joyce, to come and visit as long as they liked.
The Woods took Bevier up on his offer.
“Tom and I are closer than a lot of brothers,”
Wood said. “Brothers have to put up with one another. We don’t.”
Wood eventually bought 5 acres of land beside Bevier and broke ground on his house in May. Despite heavy rains that threw a couple of kinks into the project, the construction has gone relatively well, with Wood and Bevier doing much of the work themselves.
“Tom is a gifted person and I take directions well,” Wood said, chuckling as he and Bevier, who teaches science at East Rowan High School, paused from their labors on a recent weekday afternoon.
Wood also hired Lee Morgan, the owner of B&L Engineered Concrete in Brevard and an Eco-Block distributor, to construct the walls of the house.
“The energy savings on a house built like this are just tremendous,” said Morgan, who said he’s traveled as far south as Mississippi and as far north as Maryland to build houses and office buildings using the Eco-Block system.
He said the cost of building a house using the system is typically about 4 percent higher than a house built through conventional methods. But Morgan said that money is quickly recouped through reduced utility and insurance bills.
He said a house built of Eco-Blocks has an insulation rating of R-40 to R-50, compared to the R-16 rating of a conventional house. Morgan said he’s heard Eco-Block homeowners brag of utility bills as low as $44 per month.
“They say on a typical house it’ll cut the energy bills in half,” he said. “You save back any extra building cost back over the first four or five years you live in the house.”
Morgan said the Eco-Block system has been in existence about 20 years. He said he’s built houses as big as 14,000 square feet and as small as 1,000 square feet using the system.
Bob Cartner is an outside salesman for Salisbury’s Home Concrete who helped arrange for the delivery of concrete to Wood’s building site. He compared the Eco-Block system to a child’s Lego Blocks that are easily snapped together.
“It’s never caught on, especially in this area, but I think we’re going to see more and more of it in the future,” Cartner said of the Eco-Block system. “It’s really unique.”
Cartner said he’s not surprised that manufacturers of Eco-Block brag on the energy efficiency of the system.
“It’s going to take a long time for heat or cold to penetrate 6 inches of concrete,” he said.
Meanwhile, Wood said he’s looking forward to the day when he finishes construction of his house. For the time being, he’s camping in a tent pitched on a wooden platform outside Bevier’s house.
Wood said that despite his military background, he didn’t select a house built of Eco-Block in order to protect himself or his family in the event of a nuclear war or such.
“The only thing bunkerish about it is the way it’s built,” he said of the house. “It’s going to look like a log cabin when it’s finished.”
Now that the walls are in place, Wood is progressing with the interior labor. He and Bevier mounted most of the floor joists and did much of the interior framing.
Wood said he plans to finish the interior using tongue-and-groove cyprus wood. The house will feature mostly 9-foot ceilings, though it will also offer a cathedral ceiling in the family room.
Wood said he plans to build a 40-foot deck complete with a hot tub off the house’s upper floor. When that’s done, he’ll clear away a few pine trees that at the moment hinder a direct look at Bald Mountain visible there in the distance.
“The view’s enough to make you cry,” Wood said before picking up a hammer and returning to the task at hand.
Contact Steve Huffman at 704-797-4247 or shuffman@salisburypost.com
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