At Benson Bondstone, we believe in empowering people to live their lives to the fullest. Part of living a full life is having the home that you actually want, not just the one you can “afford.”
In that same vein, we developed a building system—the PermaPanel—that gives you the freedom to build the home you want at a price you can afford.
It’s not uncommon for the PermaPanel building system to save your new home construction in Spokane anywhere from $10,000–$40,000—and that’s against traditional stick-frame construction.
See, about half of the price of building a home (or any structure for that matter) is materials. It’s pretty typical for a home to cost $200,000 to build, and $100,000 of that is just the materials.
At the time of writing this, the price of drywall alone over at Home Depot is $11.29 a 4×8′ sheet that’s half-an-inch thick. If you check out this article from HomeAdvisor it can really help on pricing from a contractor. (Also see this Construction Directory for more info.)
But here’s a quick breakdown. Just to keep it simple, if you have a 2500 square-foot home, there’s going to be at least 2,500 of of ceiling, then at least double that in walls (being conservative here). So you take 2,500×3 and that equals 7500 square feet. Sheets needed for this would be 7500/32 and that equals about 240 (which includes 5 extra sheets for accidents and mistakes). So then 240x$11.29 = $2,709.60. Not too bad, right? We’ll even go with the lower instal price here that HomeAdvisor says $1.50 a square foot and times 7500 x $1.50 and that equals $11,250 plus $2,709.60 and that equals $13,959 just in drywall.
That’s being conservative, mind you, especially because we went with the lower numbers.
Okay, so just keep that number in mind for a bit.
For my house, we’d need 4,665 square feet of insulation for the the attic, floor, and exterior walls. Again, Home Depot’s price for R-19 batt insulation is $565.12 for a pallet, which covers 775 square feet, and so we’d need about 6 pallets for 4,665 square feet. That equals $3,390.72. At time of this article in Spokane (zip code 99201) the cost for installation is between $.75 and $1.43 a square foot depending on who you go with. The median of that is $1.09. Installation then would be $5,084.85 with a total price of $8,475.57 just for batt insulation and its installation. If you wanted to go with spray foam, it’s going to be more.
Material price over at Lowes for Tyvek’s house wrap is $165 for a 9’x150′ roll and $44.98 for the smaller roll of 3’x100′. Using the same home as above (1,588 square feet exterior plus the eves, and we’re looking at around 1,678), we’d need one big roll and one small one for material cost of $209.98. According to HomeWyse, the median installation price for Spokane area would be $1.20. So $1699.20 plus material, and we’re looking at $1,909.18.
That’s $24,343.75!
Framing’s easily the most expensive part of building a home. According to CNN, the cost of lumber jumped up 17% from 2016–2017 and in May 2017, 21% of home builders reported they were short on lumber.
Aside from the shortages,
Here’s the thing—
Materials plus labor is half the price when you use the PermaPanel.
How is this possible?
Imagine the cost and time savings of removing these materials and contractors:
It’s substantial!
The first—the very first—building ever made using the PermaPanel was a 10,000 square-foot shop—and it was erected from foundation to roof in four days.
The second was a 7,500 square-foot dream home erected from foundation to roof in under a week.
And the list goes on and on—each building saving time, money, and resources.
See, the PermaPanel is made by a proprietary mixture of cellular concrete—also known as aerated concrete. Each panel locks together without requiring special tools. After the initial structure is built, every lock, every seam, every joint, is then coated in our specialty blend that seals the interlocking panels into one solid structure. What does this do?
We’ll get to that in a second. Let me describe a couple of things for you.
I’ve built things for years, from shops to homes to remodels—I don’t want to ever build another structure without the PermaPanel. Serious.
—Paul Thomas, Rexburg, ID
The exterior walls are eight inches thick of airtight, watertight, heat-retaining wall. Just like structurally insulated panels (SIPs) the PermaPanel is insulated with far better heat retention than stick framing—but unlike SIPs, the PermaPanel doesn’t require house wrap afterward, doesn’t require drywall, and if you make a wrong cut, it doesn’t ruin the integrity of the structure. And because it’s one solid structure, you don’t have the all of the joints and cracks and air-seeping spaces that you do with traditional new construction.
Spokane’s not as wet as other parts of Washington, but it gets its fair share. And because there aren’t any of the seepages, water seeping through and creating mold behind your drywall or in your attic is a thing of the past. And because our panels our specialized concrete, the mold doesn’t even have a chance to grow.
But can a home made primarily of concrete be customizable, warm, and homy? Absolutely.
Interior walls are four inches thick, light weight—and strong. And guess what? No more having to find a stud!
Build your Spokane house today! Contact us and we’ll get you into your dream house.
