For regions that don't have to worry about a frost line helical screw piles and mass timber are game-changing building capabilities to construct concrete free. It's even possible to build carbon negative thanks to the timber locked in the building. And it's way faster since you don't spend months preparing a site and building forms.
Even frost line regions could dramatically cut their concrete usage if they just focused on protecting the water lines. You would lose a basement, but those are expensive per sq ft anyway. Just go up another floor for less total costs.
Local building codes will get in the way since building inspectors tend to reject things they haven't seen before (like mass timber frame) and way too many places have incredibly strict height restrictions.
It is incredible to watch helical screw piles go in. A friend needed 60+ posts installed for a big fence. Would have been days of digging or augering post holes down 4 ft for the frost line and then mixing hundreds of bags of cement and filling the holes with concrete. Instead a contractor with a small tracked machine that fit through a standard gate drove every pile in under an hour.
Absolutely true, but you still need a plan for protecting the water lines. You need some kind of underground insulated structure below the frost line that can handle direct dirt contact. Annoyingly concrete remains the best option.
Was recently in a fairly new construction house in a very cold climate state that did not have a full basement below the frost line. There was a partial 8’x8’ corner that sunk down to where the water line came in, but the rest of the footprint was a crawl space. Losing the basement does affect the style of building that is economical to build on top though, mainly due to building codes.
I live in an area with freezing weather. The water pipe to my house is just a PVC pipe buried below the frost line, i.e. in a trench about 3 or 4 feet deep. There's no concrete involved.
>And it's way faster since you don't spend months preparing a site and building forms.
What size house are you building that it takes months preparing a site to build foundations? Sub 2000sqft houses are built to completion in 90-120 days if weather doesn't delay things. It only takes a couple of weeks from clearing the site, digging the trenches, lining the moisture barrier, laying the rebar and forms, then pouring the cement. The formulas today cure very quickly. From the day of the pour to the start of framing is practically the blink of an eye
Here in Canada it’s extremely common for ground works for a new subdivision to take over a year.
Individual houses can be done in a much shorter time, but digging a basement, setting all the forms, pouring the concrete, waterproofing the walls, underpinning the water management, and then back filling back to grade is not a quick process.
You're comparing the time it takes a developer to clear the entire development to the time it takes to build a single house. These are not the same thing. That's comparing apples and oranges. Comparing the time for a house with no basement to one with a basement is comparing a granny smith to a red delicious.
That's about as fast as maple syrup. The ground around here never gets that cold, and basements are not a thing at all. So your 60 days is about 45 days behind schedule! Your sub-contractors are bilking the contractor ;-)
Even frost line regions could dramatically cut their concrete usage if they just focused on protecting the water lines. You would lose a basement, but those are expensive per sq ft anyway. Just go up another floor for less total costs.
Local building codes will get in the way since building inspectors tend to reject things they haven't seen before (like mass timber frame) and way too many places have incredibly strict height restrictions.
It is incredible to watch helical screw piles go in. A friend needed 60+ posts installed for a big fence. Would have been days of digging or augering post holes down 4 ft for the frost line and then mixing hundreds of bags of cement and filling the holes with concrete. Instead a contractor with a small tracked machine that fit through a standard gate drove every pile in under an hour.