Styrofoam house near Reed College is both energy-efficient and elegant

SUSTAINABLE LIVING

By Elizabeth Ussher Groff

The Bee, Feb 2, 2010

Elizabeth Ussher Groff / THE BEE

A front view of the Meyers’ Styrofoam and concrete Reed neighborhood house that has three levels, hickory wood floors, and a west view of trees and sunsets from the rear terrace.

You can build houses with it!

Four years ago, Bill and Carole Meyer — he an attorney, she a photographer and artist — began to design and build a new house in the Reed neighborhood, in what had been a large lot adjacent to their former house.

This was not to be a conventional house, but one built of Styrofoam and concrete.

In the November 2006 issue of THE BEE, an article by editor Eric Norberg described how the Meyers’ house was to be built.

A year ago, the Meyers moved into the finished house — and, this past December, it was on the Annual Duniway Holiday Home Tour.

The Meyers did not set out to be on the “green” cutting edge of construction and energy efficiency by seeking out a Styrofoam house. Actually, it all began with a desire for a stucco house.

“Acquiring a second home in 1995 in San Miguel de Allende gave us an appreciation for Mexican construction — stucco, thick walls; houses closer to the street, with yards or terraces in back,” explains Bill Meyer.

The Meyers were aware, however, that stucco over wood in the Northwest, where it rains eight to nine months a year, can create serious moisture and mold problems. Research on alternatives to wood led them to ICF (“insulating concrete forms”) construction — which consists of Styrofoam and concrete, and is highly energy efficient.

The builder of the house, Alan Naylor of Sylvan Construction, says he has been building ICF houses in the area since 1997. “I tell my customers that an ICF house takes 40-50% less heating and cooling, but that’s conservative. These houses cost 10-15% more to build, but the savings in energy pay that back in three to five years.”

Naylor says the LEED (“Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”) certifiers consider ICF construction VERY “green.” Why? “It takes fewer materials to build than a conventional wood framed house, which takes 44 to 50 trees on average. An ICF house has very little lumber, and the concrete is only 16% cement. And 66% of the light-gauge steel used for framing the walls, the floor systems, and trusses, is made from recycled automobiles.”

The elegant Meyer house has three levels — 5,943 square feet — of which 779 are garages, and 3,400 accounts for the combined main floor and second floor. The interior walls are made of 820 “blocks” of construction-grade Styrofoam (manufactured in Wilsonville), each four feet long, sixteen inches tall, and held together in pairs by rigid plastic. These forms are then filled with concrete.

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