“A religious building ought to be permanent,” insists Gary Day, owner of Dayco Construction, Porterville, California, who built Holy Cross. “Concrete is the material of choice for church buildings nowadays because it gives the building permanency better than any other material.”
Ed Sauter, an architect who also serves as executive director of the Tilt-Up Concrete Association, heartily agrees. “Religious entities are more concerned about the longevity and aesthetics of a building more than other group,” he says.
A case in point is the First Baptist Church of Indian Rocks, Largo, Florida. When this congregation needed a new well-constructed 3,000 seat sanctuary, yet was stuck with a slim budget, church elders decided concrete wall panels were the most viable and economic choice. Built by Seretta Construction, Apopka, Florida, this church with the curvilinear back wall of the sanctuary and architectural features makes a unique religious building. The aesthetic features included 23,000 feet of reveal with numerous 3/4 inch recesses.
After erecting the walls, Seretta painted the exterior with accenting neutral colors to give the church a dramatic appearance. However, the most remarkable feature is the stainless steel cross that stands 80 feet above the finished floor. To mount the cross, the company built a 10 foot by 10 foot by 1 foot 6-3/4 inch protrusion above the finished floor. The cross was attached to two panels in which Seretta built an 18-3/4 inch protrusion with a top elevation of 41 feet above the finished floor.
The heart of the building, the sanctuary, which features a sloped main floor and terraced seating at the rear, provides a spiritual refuge to the Pinellas County residents.
In order to battle the limited site access and extensive underground utilities, Seretta organized a multi-trade, coordinated tilt-wall casting layout to place deadmen without interfering with casting and lifting of the panels. Since the tallest panels reached 58 feet, 7 inches, with the majority of the panels measuring 45 feet, 1 inch tall, Seretta had a series-2 crane pick them up and walk them to their final positions.
While the panels were braced waiting for the structural steel to be installed three hurricanes hit the building, but the wind left them undamaged.
“There are no limitations except cost to what you can build with concrete,” insists Ed Trinkle, an insulating concrete form builder out of Blenheim, New Jersey. “Costs can run 5 to 7 percent more than a conventional building, but if you look at the mean square foot cost for a church of this size, with a full basement, the cost is much cheaper,” he says.
Consider Morningstar Presbyterian Church, Bayville, New Jersey, built by Trinkle. This 10,000 square foot meeting place for approximately 60 members cost approximately $1.8 million to build with insulated concrete. Yet, an energy analysis revealed utility costs would be less than $600 a month.
“Coming up with $1.8 million by 50 to 60 people was pretty hefty,” he says. As a fundraiser, members were invited to “buy” ICF blocks at $35 a block. You could buy one or as many as they wanted. Then before drywall went up the congregation had a block signing party where all the people who contributed to the church signed the walls. “When people want something bad enough they are willing to sacrifice,” says Trinkle. “But any savings helps.”
Concrete church builders are winning more contracts by providing more creative design, says Sauter. “Some of our more creative designs for the last 10 years have come out of the religious area,” he adds. “The tallest tilt-up panel that has been erected, to our knowledge, was in a gothic type cathedral in Florida.”
A good example is St. Julia Catholic Church, Silver City, North Carolina. Parishioners wanted the facility to resemble a southwestern Mission style church. First designed to be load bearing masonry, the shape and height of the walls introduced budget and constructability issues. By switching to load bearing insulated concrete panels it gave project manager Matt Riggs, Centurion Construction Company, Raleigh, North Carolina, the freedom—and budget—he needed to match the architect’s renderings. Using laminated wood beams as the main members, Riggs lifted insulated concrete bell tower panels, some as tall as 53 feet, into place. One wall of the bell tower was designed to be sloped. Traditional masonry would not allow this without expensive structural steel back up. Since space was very limited on the site, Riggs constructed all the panels either on the floor slab or on small casting beds. This still did not allow for enough space, so Riggs had to stack the panels and build them in the proper erection sequence.
“If your primary goal is to enclose space, a metal building will do that. But for greater aesthetics, certainly better durability, low maintenance and longevity, if the parish has the money, most of them will go with concrete,” says Sauter.
Concrete also adds to the community overall, say these contractors. With the goal of having the chapel look like the community was built around it, Bishop Gadsden, a 4,519 square foot spiritual building in Charleston, South Carolina, built by Citadel Contractors, Inc., Charleston, South Carolina, was built of panels with a tabby stucco exterior finish. Tabby stucco, made of oyster shells, sand and water, was used by early settlers to build walls and piers. The parish selected concrete panel construction because it was the only feasible system for constructing walls with the tabby stucco texture.
To develop a technique to create the tabby stucco texture, Citadel tested mockup panels. The solution consisted of hand stacking the oyster shells in a 3/8 inch thick sandbed and using white cement to bond the shells into a textured layer, before casting the structural layer. To create the joints in a manner characteristic of cut stone, Citadel used 1-1/2 inch deep reveals beveled at 12.5 degrees. Toothed joints were necessary to create the cut stone quoins at the two outside steeple corners. Each joint has nineteen teeth over a 42 foot, 11 inch height.
The color scheme for the project is dominated by the various shades of natural white oyster shells with a white lime wash over exposed concrete. The steeple walls are smooth concrete patterned to simulate cut stone with quoined corners. Tall, slender arched windows are dressed in exposed concrete cut stone trim.
“Anytime you can use natural materials that weave in with the environment it makes people feel at ease when they walk into the building,” explains Day. “People feel that the building has been there for some time. This gives the building a feeling of permanency.”
Embedding fascia materials also lowers the safety risk. Bedford Baptist Church, a 4,200 square foot religious facility in Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada, built by B.D. Stevens Limited, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, was initially slated to be constructed with conventional brick veneer with a concrete foundation. However, the client opted to switch to concrete panels because the use of inlay brick eliminated the high elevation work. Further, concrete construction allowed the church to continue to meet during renovation. Moreover, Stevens achieved the same architectural statement as the original church constructed in 1963.
Since the project was an addition, the panels had to match the existing brick and window detailing. To aid in this task, Stevens reused the sills from the original windows in the panels. The contractor used brick returns and corners on triangular windows and trimmed the six-foot diameter round window and a 15 foot wide semi-circular opening in thin brick. The panels act as retaining walls in the foundation walls in the basement level, eliminating a full basement wall that would have impaired access to the church during the remodeling. Further, the loadbearing properties of the panels eliminated all support angles and a large gluelam beam initially designed to hold the high roof. Instead, Stevens cast irregular shaped panels to form the pitch of the church roof. The panels also eliminated moisture penetration concerns typically associated with traditional brick in this market.
There is also good money to be made on renovations, insists Sherman Balch, Jr., Balch Enterprises, Fremont, California, currently the contractor on a Korean First Baptist church in the Bay Area in Livermore, California. Since the cost of land in Northern California is expensive, many congregations are moving into existing buildings and renovating them, he says. Other congregations, such as Faith Chapel Christian Center in Birmingham, Alabama, are building in phases. Andrew South, project manager and partner for South Industries, Menan, Idaho, is building six interconnected domes—two measuring 160 feet in diameter and the remaining four measuring 140 feet—which will add 100,000 square feet to the existing 60,000 square feet.
You may not make a killing by building concrete religious buildings, but there is money to be made, say these contractors. “It’s not a huge market, but of the religious buildings that are being built, concrete seems to be people’s choice,” says Sauter. “When someone builds a church they aren’t looking to write it off in seven years. They are building a church that will be there for a 100 years.”