For Bill Bailey, it prompted the following question: What if a real-life house could snap together simply with pre-manufactured concrete panels shipped in from a plant?
At 31, Bailey has reached the point in his career where he wants to stand out with a new innovation rather than compete on the same terms as everyone else. So the owner of Statesboro, Georgia-based Precision Concrete and Steel Manufacturing LLC started to wonder if maybe panels for homes could indeed be manufactured and assembled quickly and easily. The more he became convinced that the answer was yes, the more comfortable he became with the idea of trying it out on a house for a very special customer. Himself.
“It’s done with precast wall panels that we lay down on a slab, and then we stand them up,” Bailey says. “It’s got a pin system that locks the panels together, and we stamp the panels together to look like stain or stucco.”
Bailey believes that his system will allow a house to be essentially constructed within 10 to 15 days of the panels’ arriving on the job site. They are assembled in pre-cast concrete plants and shipped to the site—with electrical conduits, telephone jacks and security connections already in the panels. The hollow core panels used for Bailey’s home, made with 5,000-psi lightweight concrete, are 9.5 feet by 30 feet, while the panels for the chimney are 37 feet tall and 15 feet wide. Panels are custom-made to include duct-work already designed in, including sewer and water.
Bailey custom-manufactures his own forms—a tongue-and-groove design that locks together with a 2-inch steel pin. The panels for Bailey’s house also come with stucco already designed in. It only needs to be colored on the job site.
“All we have to do is rub the color in,” Bailey says. “The bottom of the house and some of the window frames would be a greenish-gray granite looking rock, then we go to a white stucco color, green shutters and green shading.”
While Bailey’s system saves on job-site labor, he does not attempt to make the case that it is a major cost-saver overall. “You’ve still got to have a 250-ton crane,” he says. “It’s not about the money. It’s about the time and the quality. By the time you factor in a freight truck and everything it’s not going to be a major cost saving.”
But Bailey says that smart builders have a chance to save money if they do a good job of managing the resulting reduction in necessary labor. And even if costs remain the same, he believes value for the dollar, as well as for the time invested, makes his idea a winner.
“I’ve done a lot of disaster work,” Bailey says. “A lot of hurricanes—Katrina, Andrew, Hugo, Ivan—and the advantage of these houses is that if a Category 5 hurricane hits Biloxi, Mississippi, you can take all the precasters in the country and you can put concrete structures back in the market. Now, they buy all these mobile homes.”
Bailey got started in the business at 20, starting with just seven employees and $1,200 to his name. Now his company has topped $10 million in annual sales, and has separate LLCs set up for buying and developing property. Even so, Bailey is hoping to attract some additional investors to help finance his precast concrete home concept.
“I can put together a complete steel concrete package, I can fabricate the steel in my shop,” Bailey says. “I can fabricate and pull the panels in the pre-cast site, and I can have 18-wheelers show up at your job site, and in five days, you’re ready.”
Bailey says the idea came to him early in 2006. He applied his experience building everything from condominiums to casinos on the Mississippi gulf coast.
“I was in the process of building a house, and I wanted a concrete house,” Bailey says. “I had to come back and put concrete siding on the outside. Whenever you pull a panel, the outside is ready for coloring or whatever you’re going to do.”
Bailey’s primary marketing efforts will focus on Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina. He plans to work through builders’ associations to get the word out about his method and build demand for the homes he is developing.
The frequency of hurricanes and his experience working that region of the country should, he believes, provide ample opportunity for the concept to catch on.
But will homebuyers begin embracing the concept of the concrete home in greater numbers? Common concerns tend to focus on insulation quality, condensation and a lack of convincing evidence to date that cost can be kept under control. But insurance companies are increasingly offering incentives for concrete construction, and building codes are becoming more stringent, which may give pre-cast concrete an opportunity to gain greater acceptance in the minds of homebuyers or those choosing to have homes built.
Bailey believes pre-cast concrete houses are hurricane-proof, which would certainly be appealing in the gulf coast area. But even more compellingly, because of overall quality and the time saved in construction, he believes they are certain to catch on with wider audiences.
“Concrete houses are the way of the future,” he says. “They’re the fastest and the best.”