Susan Gordon, Staff ReporterUSING EXPANDED polystyrene (EPS), Free Form Factory Limited wants to revolutionise construction in Jamaica and make it at least 30 per cent cheaper to build your own home or just about anything involving block and steel.
Described as 'the pearl of plastic,' EPS is a light-weight plastic derived from petroleum by-products and natural gases and is manufactured from expandable beads which can be moulded in a range of densities.
"You will get a faster, cheaper and cooler house which is just as strong," managing director of Free Form, Keith Edwards, told Sunday Business. He says that foam material is water and fire-resistant and, for the security conscious, bullet resistant.
PRODUCTS OF FOAM
For the past five years, several local housing developments, hotels, bridges, and entertainment centres have been built using EPS. The Iberostar Hotel, the Piñero Group, Tony Walker Construction Realty Limited, Magil Construction, Riu Hotels, the Acropolis in the Losushan Plaza and Sabina Park have used the product in construction. The Emancipation Park's famous statue is a product of foam at the interior.
Edwards says that the method is approved by the Bureau of Standards.
Using the traditional block and steel in construction costs around $5,100 per square foot to build a low-income house on a flat serviced land, with a contractor.
The businessman told Sunday Business that the technology has been around for some 50 years. "It's an excellent material for seismic activity as it is flexible and reduces the weight of your building," explained Mr. Edwards. The sole distributor for EPS in Jamaica, he sources the raw material from Mexico, Colombia, Canada and Asia. So successful is the product that he has embarked on $40 million expansion plan.
"They survived Hurricane Ivan, a year and a half ago," said Marketing Consultant for Tony Walker Construction, Eileen Davis. Tony Walker is the developer of Casitas, the gated housing complex being built on Deanery Road in Vineyard Town.
She said the last of the 800 square feet, two-bedroom Casitas units was sold last week for $7 million cash and attest to the confidence which consumers have in the structures. The units came on the market two years ago for just under $5 million. "It's ... a more efficient way of building especially when you are building in volume," she added.
According to Edwards, using foam in construction is a more modern version of the 'wattle and daub' method used in the construction of the older type Jamaican houses. This method involved mud and a network of sticks and wood to form an unbreakable wall structure.
He says the developers or builders can give the wall and ceiling dimensions and the factory will cut the mould to meet these specifications.
Before creating the foam panel, the EPS is expanded using heat and steam to density of 1.2 pounds per cubic feet and densely packed with steel wire mesh in a grid pattern. This grid is said to be a strong as the regular quarter inch steel used in the block and steel construction.
Once erected, using a crane or a few workmen, the foam wall is plastered or sprayed with concrete on both sides. The concrete, which is generally an inch and a half thick all around, is sprayed on forming a monolithic concrete wall. So "the foam really acts as a void filler," explained Mr. Edwards. In building the columns, the quarter inch steel is still used at the core of the columns with the foam forming a hollow frame around it. The builder has options to repair and expand on the units in a similar manner as traditional construction methods.
At present, it appears that plastic is a practical alternative for building especially since some developers have already indicated that construction costs will hike to make up for the losses incurred during the recent cement shortage.
