It's safe to say that for the building industry, the term "energy efficiency" has entered into common usage. For homeowners, more and more of whom are thinking about long-term maintenance costs, energy efficiency has become a new standard of quality.
So it's no wonder that companies like
Superior Walls have been successful at promoting new building techniques and technologies like, well, like superior walls.
The New Holland-based company, founded in 1981 by homebuilder Mel Zimmerman, manufactures precast residential foundations from high-quality concrete that is impervious to moisture. The concrete forms, which are built in factories according to spec and transported on trucks to the building site, have foam insulation and steel studs on the inside of the walls to streamline the finishing process.
The entire process--and the end product--is something relatively new in the building industry. Once the forms are built, the entire installation process takes less than a day. Since the forms arrive on site ready to install (no concrete pouring is required) weather conditions are not a factor, and therefore create no delays.
But for the homeowner, the appeal of Superior Walls extends beyond the construction phase; the unique concrete walls create a thermal envelope that reduces leaks and lower energy costs. For those homeowners who are also concerned about the environment, Superior Walls also touts its product as environmentally friendly, reducing the carbon footprint of home construction by using fewer resources like wood and concrete and creating far less construction site waste and zero soil contamination.