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Cinderblock construction is labour-intensive as each block must be laid individually and grouted into position at that time. |
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| So much for Hurricane resistant cinder block construction on this home. The wall was constructed within days before the storm rolled into the area. In the right side image, cinder blocks hang on to steel rods while others collapsed completely. |
Once construction is complete, cinderblocks offer simply a shell building as a finished product. Exterior finishing must be done and inside the building conduit must be attached to the interior walls for plumbing and electrical installation.
Genie Blocks, by comparison, are made from steel-reinforced 35MpA concrete and are correspondingly strong. Genie blocks are laid in 6-foot segments, which greatly increases the speed of construction and requires far fewer man-hours to complete. When a Genie Block building is finished it has a textured and finished exterior. The interior walls of a Genie Block construction will not be cluttered with unsightly conduit due to their unique inclusion of both horizontal as well as vertical hollows which allow all plumbing and electrical services to be contained within the walls.
Tilt up construction is reinforced concrete just as Genie Blocks are.
However, tilt-up requires considerable labour for the form-building
process that is unique to each building plan. Furthermore, by
necessity, tilt-up construction requires considerable heavy duty
machinery (and operators) such as concrete pumping trucks and heavy
lifting cranes to lift and set concrete panels that can easily weigh
80 tons or more. As with cinderblock, a tilt up building provides a
shell that must then be finished outside and inside … adding to labour
costs.
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Just the cost of a crane adds substantially to building costs. |
Genie Blocks, on the other hand, come pre-fabricated in manageable sizes. In fact, for most projects, construction with Genie Blocks can be done with two workers and a backhoe! This alone makes Genie Blocks the cost-effective alternative to both concrete construction methods above!
The following article offers an objective evaluation.
Insulated Concrete Forms: Another OpinionDesign & Architecture
Philip
Proefrock over at Green Options discusses Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF's)
and appears to like them, saying "they offer green benefits". I like
Philip's posts but think there is room for another opinion.
ICFs are a way of building a well insulated concrete wall out of easy to use, lego-like forms made from expanded polystyrene. Neither concrete or styrofoam are particularly green materials, but with rare exceptions all foundation technologies are pretty gross, primitive and invasive and few systems tread lightly on the landscape.
Above grade, the use of ICFs is questionable. They are serious architectural overkill- the up-front carbon load is astounding, and at the end of their life they are good for nothing but landfill. An equivalent insulating value can be achieved without such massive use of carbon and hydrocarbon intense materials.
Yet they are marketed as a green product; one brand is even called eco-blocks. Before we started measuring building materials in terms of their carbon footprint, before we worried about trucking gravel and making cement, before we measured the hydrocarbon content of our insulations, it might have been. Now a green building is one where we tread lightly, build out of recycled and recyclable materials, use as little of them as we can, and think about preconstruction, deconstruction and lifecycle.
ICFs are energy efficient for the occupant, solid and strong, and useful for foundations. However I think we are past the point where anything that saves a little money on heating is called green, the issues are bigger than that now. In such a world, polystyrene and concrete sandwiches are not green.
These comparisons highlight why Genie Blocks are the method of the future. They provide the block by block simplicity of cinderblocks with the strength of tilt-up construction, are very friendly to the environment, and a multitude of attractive exterior face designs means the exterior of the building is finished with just a little grout and paint!.
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Residential Projects
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Small Concrete Structures
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Large
Concrete Structures
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Small
Concrete Retaining Walls
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Large
Concrete Retaining Walls
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Concrete Fences
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Staircase Systems
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All contents are Copyright ©2005-2007
Genie Block® Manufacturing. All
rights reserved.
Patents Pending on all products and proprietary tools shown or described herein. |
