The St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway is marking a first in Lynchburg, Virginia: a 2,900-square-foot home built with concrete masonry units, or CMU, as its primary structural system.
The home, in the Blackwater Run neighborhood, is being highlighted by Beauty of Block, an initiative of the Concrete Masonry Checkoff that promotes residential and commercial uses of manufactured concrete masonry. Old Dominion Block, Brick & Hardscapes supplied about 5,700 structural and architectural CMU for the build.
Instead of hiding the material, the design leans into it. The project includes a honed CMU feature wall that runs two stories in the cathedral great room, deep window openings that add dimension and daylight, and exposed masonry that makes the chimney part of the interior look. The release also points to performance benefits crews and owners care about, including quieter interiors, fewer temperature swings, and resistance to termites, rot, and moisture-related damage.
For mason contractors, there’s a schedule lesson here, too. The builder, L.G. Flint General Contractors, said the plan originally called for a conventional light-frame structural system, then shifted to CMU with support from the Beauty of Block Design Collective. Even after weather pushed work into January, the team said early coordination helped integrate conventional floor and roof systems, recover about a week of delay, and finish the masonry structure 1 to 2 weeks ahead of schedule.
The release notes that CMU is noncombustible and, depending on design and configuration, masonry assemblies can provide fire-resistance ratings of up to 4 hours. It also says reinforced masonry can be engineered for site-specific hurricane and high-wind loads. Public tours are scheduled Aug. 22 through Sept. 13, with the giveaway set for Sept. 23. The release also points builders and designers to BlockDesign.org for free, project-specific assistance on concrete masonry projects.
Read the full, original article from PR Newswire here.