A Home Made of Foam? This One in Rochester is Like a Giant Cooler, Designers Say

As an engineer, Ryan Rasmussen said his job is actually quite simple.

It's all about unique design.

"It is the nature of every engineer to aspire to an elegant design," said Rasmussen, of Rochester Hills, the founder of Fieldstone Engineering.

"It’s different components coming together to combine something unique, to form a whole that is far superior from the original."

The former research and development engineer with Pulte Homes is putting the word "unique" to the test in a Rochester home he has designed with technology that reflects elegance — and saves energy, too.

The home on Oak Street, near downtown Rochester, is built using a kind of SIP, or structural insulated panel. Rasmussen said it's a material that reduces energy costs between 70 percent to 80 percent while increasing durability, all in a simpler package that can takes around two months to build.

The entire frame of the house is made from pre-assembled styrofoam blocks. They are placed together similar to Lego blocks and glued. After, a half-inch layer of a mixture of concrete and fiberglass is applied.

"There is a little bit of a selling curve," said Irvin Meram, architect and designer with Studio 9, who is working with Rasmussen on the project. "For those who don’t understand it so much, they are so used to seeing wood houses that they really don’t know how to react."

But Meram said as he walks customers through the process, many understand why the unorthodox approach works.

Because the walls are insulated with 10-inch-thick sheets of styrofoam coated by a strong mixture of cement and fiberglass, the house essentially acts as a giant cooler.

In fact, he said owners of similar houses in the southwestern parts of the country only turn on their air conditioners for the hottest days in July and August.

As for the cost, Meram said the building materials themselves cost between 10 percent and 15 percent more than materials used for traditional houses. But due to the shorter and less complex construction period, he said, the cost difference for the overall building should break even, he said.

Rasmussen hails the design as a more green approach. The Rochester home is one of two he is building right now in the area; a second home in Lake Orion will feature solar panels to provide the home's heat.

The Oak Street home adds to the green practices already ongoing in Rochester, Rasmussen said. The city was the scene earlier this year of the state's largest "green" festival, called the Green Living Festival. Most recently, city offficials began working to install electric car-charging stations in downtown parking lots.

Though energy-efficient homes like this are few and far between, continually rising energy costs make this an increasingly attractive option.

"I am just happy to know it is happening," he said. "More and more people are embracing green technology and becoming more efficient."

For more information, contact Fieldstone Engineering at 248-622-4035 or online at www.fieldstoneengineering.com. For more information about the SIP product, visit http://creativecompositesolutions.com/.