When Dale and Jill Jurecki decided they were ready to build a new home, they found a lot they liked in a nearby neighborhood and a model that, with a few alternations, would be just right.
What they had not considered was whether they wanted a steel frame house, the construction method used by the builder who owned the property.
“I never knew about steel framing,” said Dale Jurecki, who recalls that the first mention of the material raised plenty of questions in his mind.
But after doing a little research, Jurecki, who owns a computer service company, opted to build with steel. Today he is glad he did.
The Northern Indiana businessman is convinced that the home he and his family have lived in for the last 18 months is stronger, yet was less expensive, than a comparable wood-frame residence. He is pleased that there have been no annoying nail pops and hairline cracks because “steel doesn’t twist, bend, crack or shrink.”
And, while comparisons between houses are often difficult, his energy bills have stayed the same even though the new house, at 2,500 square feet, is larger than his family’s former residence, a 40-year old, 1,500 square foot home.
The biggest adjustment, says Jurecki, has been “decoration” and he is buying “anchors” instead of nails. Hanging heavier wall decor is more difficult though doable by drilling a hole through a stud and using a steel screw.
The upside, says Jim Prisby, another steel frame homeowner, “You can find the stud very easily.”
While steel is common in commercial construction, steel frame is used only in between 2 and 5 percent of U.S. homes, most built by small, independent builders. There are signs that is beginning to change.
“Steel framing has increased 300 percent” in the last four years,” says Lisa Stevens, spokesman of the Steel Framing Alliance, a national trade association of producers, builders and others interested in promoting steel in North America.
Sales of steel flooring systems are up in Denver, where concerns about saving trees and the environment are strong.
More than 60 percent of the new home market in Hawaii now is built with steel because the material resists the voracious Formosa termite. And as that pest has spread to New Orleans and the Gulf States, a growing number of builders and buyers in Louisiana and Texas are turning to steel in that region as well.
“When lumber prices start to become a problem, builders begin to look at steel,” says Philip DeNapoli, vice president of residential construction for Chicago-based M. Ecker & Co. Illinois Inc., a drywall and painting subcontractor.
“We are working with a builder now on steel framing–interiors walls, not exterior–on 20 units as a feasibility study,” he reports.
Proponents of steel say the material is straighter, stronger and more durable than wood.
Rust, a worry that leaps to mind for many home buyers, is not usually a problem because the is steel is galvanized and the beams used for exterior walls are coated with an inhibitor similar to the undercoating for cars.
Steel is highly conductive of heat and cold , however. And it requires careful advance planning because it is delivered to the building site pre-cut.
It also requires different tools–workmen swap hammers for screw guns and steel connections are done with drills–and, perhaps most important, a different approach by builders.
“I think it’s very important to work with a contractor who knows how to work with steel. A wood contractor can’t just say I’ll build you a steel home.,” says Prisby, president of a Munster, Ind. Bank, recalling a project where a wood contractor without prior steel frame experience built some homes and there were some problems.
“It is important to know how to put a steel frame house together,” says John Gogolak, a former structural steel iron worker turned custom home builder in Crown Point, Ind.
Gogolak Contractors builds five or six houses a year mostly to step-up buyers spending from $300,000 to $800,000. Gogolak is convinced that steel is a better construction component than wood.
“Steel is precise, true, exact,” he insists, adding it is important for those working with the material not to cling too closely to a “preconceived notion” of how a house is built.
“With a steel frame house, the house stacks,” says Gogolak of what he considers a critical difference from wood framing.
The builder says steel “does take a little forethought” but says the material is five times stronger than wood.
“Steel spans long. We don’t have to deal with the knots and water content like in wood,” he says. “If you wanted a 44-foot span in wood you may have to design a truss system to support it. With steel you kick up the gauge. Steel is predictable.
“Steel shines in these bigger homes, because you are actually using less material because there is no need for elaborate truss systems to provide long open spaces.”
The standard in wood framing, says Gogolak, is “16-inch on center. Steel is 24-inch on center so you are looking at one-third less material.”
Furthermore, steel is manufactured with consistent production standards while wood, as a commodity, must be screened carefully for quality and is more subject to fluctuating prices, he notes.
Dennis Henderlong is a fourth-generation builder from Valparaiso, Ind., who switched from wood to steel several years ago. He is president of Generation Homes, which builds homes based-priced from $130,000 to $250,000.
Henderlong also is president of Residential Steel Design Systems, a light gauge steel design, supply and framing firm that works for others building homes priced up to $500,000.
Among the reasons Henderlong switched to steel “is its stronger, straighter and more durable. You don’t have drywall cracks, one of the largest reasons for builder callbacks. My callbacks went way down.”
And while he uses mostly steel, Henderlong is not a purist and says his homes are something of a hybrid.
“We do use wood where it makes sense,” notably around windows to eliminate the “sweating” that can result from steel conducting cold, he says.
Adjustments in construction methods are easier than adjustments in attitudes, however.
Residential carpenters are accustomed to working with wood and it is difficult to convince them to try steel, he and Gogolak contend. It has been almost as hard to convince builders to try steel framing because a switch would mean re-training workers and disrupting established building procedures and supply sources, all potentially costly changes.
Henderlong, nevertheless, notes that steel is beginning to make inroads.
“It’s going to to grow. How much I don’t know,” says Henderlong citing the big increases of recent years as production builders beginto use some steel components.
Robert Woods, owner of Woodco Construction in Oak Lawn, has done both wood and steel framing.
Woods recently completed Woodco’s first steel-frame house in Mokena. The residence, an eye-catching 3,600 square feet with nearly as much basement space, was built with his friend and the home’s owner, Dan Calderon.
Started early in 2002, the steel frame stood out against the stark winter landscape, attracting a steady stream of curious passersby, some of whom turned into customers, says Woods.
“I’m seeing more receptivity to it,” Woods says. “The Mokena house has elicited a lot of interest, which indicates buyers are not as tied to traditional stick-built as some builders may think and may be more willing to try steel-framing than previously supposed.”
Don’t fret about steel in the cold
“One thing you have to worry about is heat and cold transference, says builder Dennis Henderlong about steel frame residences. He uses a combination of foamboard and “a blow-in cellulose spray insualtion that really seals up the house and cuts off the infiltration of air.”
He was asked in 1999 by the NAHB Research Center, a research and development arm of the National Association of Home Builders, to build two 2,200 square foot houses, one wood frame, the other steel frame. One goal was to compare energy use. Completed in April, 2000, the two Indiana houses were monitored until Spring 2001 by the research center based in Upper Marlboro, Md.
While final results from test sites in other parts of the country are not yet in, the initial indication is that “the houses can be built at comparable prices” and that with as little as $600 of additional insulation, steel framing performs comparably to wood thermally, says Craig Drumheller, research center energy engineer.
— Sharon Stangenes
