When Patty and Joe Trindl decided to put a large addition onto their suburban home, builder Jim Ebbole suggested trying a non-wood product for balconies off the upper level of the house.
“I have a wood-sided home,” says Trindl. “I have an interest in historic homes. So when Jim said it was plastic, I said, `I don’t want it.’ “
Ebbole, owner of Ebb Renovation & Design of Glen Ellyn, urged Trindl to think about his suggestion and left a piece of the composite of sawdust, recycled milk jugs and pallet wrap in the Trindl yard.
After several weeks, Patty noticed the slab was indistinguishable from weathered wood, so she reconsidered, deciding to give it a try. Today, after one year of use, she says the decking, dubbed Trex, is “fantastic” and so easy to maintain the “rain basically keeps it up.”
Ebbole, who has been renovating and building additions to vintage homes in the western suburbs for 18 years, says he uses the wood alternative only for special uses.
Although more costly than pressure-treated lumber, the builder explains, “It doesn’t have knots. There is no twisting and warping like in some lumber and it doesn’t hold moisture, which is a plus.”
It is but one of a growing number of non-wood products in an industry where change has been notoriously slow.
“Traditional materials are what the buyer expects and wants,” says Jim Vanderploeg, director of purchasing for Palatine-based Concord Homes. “This is the biggest investment they will make. Maybe they’ll try a new kind of car, but most of them don’t want a new kind of house.”
“Builders adopt some new products slowly because they need to see a track record,” he says. “As a builder, he doesn’t want something to be a problem 20 years down the road,” says Vanderpoel. “There is a lot of a testing that needs to be done. Customer acceptance is the biggest (obstacle) in the growth of non-traditional materials and components. Second is the labor force.”
But as the price, quantity and quality of traditional building products, particularly wood, fluctuates, builders have turned to alternatives. And as many home buyers have become more time-pressed and affluent, demand for low-maintenance and easy-care home components has created a market open to new options.
Material shortage is one of the the “megatrends” in modern construction, according to Builder magazine in its January 2000 issue.
“Because the typical new wood-framed home requires 15,000 board feet of lumber, even a small (price) increase hits the bottom line hard,” it noted. “Dwindling natural resources are likely to force builders to turn to a new generation of engineered building materials.”
Lumber suppliers themselves have introduced now-common products such as oriented strand board (OSB), a kind of manufactured plywood made of wood particles, for floor sheathing and wall panels, and engineered wood components such as I-joists.
“The advantages are the consistency in product manufacture and design,” says Concord’s Vanderploeg. “You can use younger-growth trees and you can use more of the tree in the production.”
At the same time, builders have adopted techniques such as pre-assembled, or panelized, walls to eliminate lumber waste.
With computerization, such pre-assembly is more sophisticated than in the past. It is little problem to satisfy smaller orders and individualized plans, notes Vanderploeg.
Such techniques don’t always save money, he says, but are valuable, especially in multifamily building, where efficiency is critical.
“Consistency in design is the goal,” he says. “The dimensions are always the same. If we do the program efficiently enough, there will be a savings.”
Tom Kenney is director of laboratory services for the National Association of Home Builders Research Center in Upper Marlboro, Md.
The research center looks at code issues and performance qualities and whether new products can be used by builders now. It works with the federally funded Partnership in Advancement of Housing (PATH) program aimed primarily at reducing energy consumption and improving housing affordability.
Non-wood alternatives top the list of products that Kenney says will see greater use in the years ahead, though local ordinances often slow introduction of many non-traditional products as does reluctance to retrain contractors.
“The learning curve is always an impediment to a builder who must train or ask contractors to learn to work with a new material,” says Kenney. This is especially true in a booming market when builders can barely keep up with demand.
At the same time, “there is the administrative bureaucratic red tape behind the scenes” of building department and zoning codes. “That type of resistance is not seen, but is critical to builders,” notes Kenney.
Despite those hurdles, Kenney predicts home buyers will encounter in the years ahead more concrete products such as fiber cement siding and shingles and stamped concrete, plastic wood, steel roofing, insulating concrete forms and steel framing.
The driving forces for these alternatives are “cost, energy efficiency, impact on the environment and durability,” says Bob Fuller, a research engineer at the research center.
One example, he says, is fiber cement siding “because of durability. It will cost more than vinyl but will cost less than lap siding. It is resistant to most moisture problems and resistant to hail. And it is lower maintenance” than wood. “You do have to paint it, but only every 5 to 10 years,” he says.
Available from several manufacturers, the siding perhaps is best known as Hardiplank, the trade name of the product sold by James Hardie Building Products.
The siding is made of cement, finely ground sand, cellulose fibers and water and has been sold in Australia for several decades. It is touted as non-combustible and resistant to insects and rot. Furthermore, it has a 50-year limited warranty, which builders and buyers find appealing.
Introduced in the Chicago market in the early 1990s, it has taken off in recent years, say local builders.
Ben Jogodnik is vice president of Toll Brothers, based in Huntingdon Valley, Pa. The company is a relative newcomer to the Chicago area and is building the Preserve at Long Grove and Estates at Lake Barrington.
“When we entered the Chicago market,” says Jogodnik, fiber cement was hardly evident. “Now we see many builders using it.”
Non-wood siding is not new in home building. Aluminium and vinyl are popular and affordable wood alternatives. For traditionalists who can afford wood, cedar has been the siding of choice.
Fiber cement siding “looks almost like cedar” and “is about the same price,” says Jogodnik.
His firm first began working with it six years ago in a development in Princeton, N.J. Jogodnik says buyers were offered a choice of cedar or fiber cement siding. Company officials were surprised when “9 out of 10” customers opted for the fiber cement.
The product’s promised ease of maintenance as well as durability may entice consumers, and is a lure to production builders as well.
As Jogodnik explains, “Cedar is a natural product. And like all natural products is subject to variation, which some people say is part of its charm.” The wood, like other natural products has color variations, points out the executive, but “Hardiplank is much more uniform . . .When I’m building a community for five years, there are people who do not maintain their cedar siding and it shows.”
Toll Brothers, like Jim Ebbole of Glen Ellyn, is beginning to use “synthetic decking material” because it “doesn’t need that much maintenance,” says Jogodnik, who is also studying, but not yet committed to, a plastic slate replacement.
Decorative trim, decking and fencing, as a category, is rich with new alternatives. Many have been used more extensively by renovation and remodeling contractors than production builders. Ebbole has installed Fiberglas columns on porches for example, which he has found to work well. “Again, it is usually a matter of maintenance,” he says.
Kenney of the NAHB research center notes that plastic lumber is often used in decorative trim. “Window-makers sometimes make use of this product,” he says. “The aesthetics are good. It’s often indistinguishable from wood.”
Recycled plastic, virgin vinyl and composite materials are available for railings, posts and fencing as well as decking, but the plastic appearance of many products may be a hurdle.
Among the most natural looking is Trex, a composite and one of the first alternative decking materials to be widely marketed, so the name is sometimes used for any composite. SmartDeck and Boardwalk are two competitors that are expected to be more widely distributed in the coming months.
The composites’ prices are competitive with each other but expensive when compared to pressure-treated wood. The sting of the initial costs, however, is eased if the annual wood upkeep is factored in. The alternatives are low — not no — maintenance, contrary to some enthusiasts.
“Some of these materials are not cheaper,” Jogodnik says of wood alternatives, so price can be a problem for some builders.
An even bigger problem, especially among buyers concerned more about looks than cost, is aesthetics.
“The first thing that drives us is looks. I can’t choose something that doesn’t look good,” Jogodnik maintains. The second consideration, he insists, is, “what is the cost? Is is more, the same or less and what is the value depending upon that. The bottom line is `are you offering something that’s better?’ and then look at the cost.”
The answer to that question is pushing some builders, albeit slowly, toward wood frame alternatives.
Andrew Ferris, president of Northbrook-based Ferris Homes, says his firm is “going to be doing homes with ICFs (insulating concrete forms). They’re not new. They’ve been around for a while, but the technology has improved. And the way they go together is more efficient than in the past.”
The reason for adopting ICF construction — concrete is poured between two layers of rigid polystyrene or other insulating material — is energy-efficiency, Ferris says, so “heating and cooling cost becomes minimal.”
In addition, the sound-proofing qualities are excellent,” says Ferris. “You could put a house built with ICFs next to a railroad and, depending upon how you position the windows, you wouldn’t hear a thing,” he claims.
“With 2 to 3 inches of Styrofoam on either side of 6 to 8 inches of concrete, you have a very slow transference of heat or cold,” he explains. “In winter, it does not take of lot of energy to heat the house and not a lot of energy to cool the house in the summer.”
Ferris believes the energy efficiency will be appealing to buyers this winter with heating costs escalating. And if energy prices “stay at this level it’s going to be more important in the future,” he says.
And it is that uncertain future that keeps many builders monitoring non-wood alternatives.
Concord’s Vanderploeg says he is a subscriber to a publication that tracks the use of steel framing for residences.
Steel, long used in commercial building, has its benefits and drawbacks, he notes. Retraining construction crews to work with a new material is a major issue, however.
“With the cost of lumber as low as it’s been for 6 to 8 months, there is little incentive for any builder to switch to steel,” he notes.
But “lumber is subject to major price spikes, depending upon government policies and consumer demand. It can fluctuate as much as 20 percent in a quarter, ” he observes. “Several years ago, steel framing was used in 5 percent of new construction. Recently I read that steel framing now is 8 to 9 percent.”
