Light precast walls made of mixed polysterene (styro) foam and cement sandwiched in fiber cement is the new thing for walls today. This non traditional material for walls is extra ordinarily strong. We even tested the sample house with a sledge hammer which created a dent but did not make a hole through to the other side.
This is light yet each 2 x 8 feet panel needs to be carried by two workers. It has a snap on edging that you can link to another panel like you are linking puzzles. You will use a special cement based adhesive that connects each panel with the strength of epoxy.
If you compute the area covered by the 2 x 8 feet dimensions of the pre cast walls and compare it with the cost of the equivalent area covered by the traditional hollow blocks, the traditional hollow blocks will still come out cheaper, but the advantage lies on the ease and speed at which you can pile them up and cover your wall in no time – thus saving you big time on the cost of labor.
So if you do a quick computation – the relatively higher cost of the pre fab panels will be carried on to the savings you will make on the cost of the labor, as labor nowadays is costly due to the recent increases in workers wages. Labor always costs more than materials thus every bit of time that you can save on the labor time is always big savings on the total cost of the project. This is why more and more people are getting on with the pre fab frenzy. We get more calls on pre fab requests than the traditional materials when building homes or doing expansion renovations.
Styrofoam (polysterene) is also very popular for heat insulation thus mixing it with cement will give your walls excellent heat insulation with the strength of concrete – saving you money on the cost of the electricity for the air conditioners. You might still need air conditioners during noon time, but you don’t need to run it the whole day anymore…
