Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Manufactured housing-foam core

[Collaborative Housing Society (cohosoc]

You might be refering to the AAB Building System, invented in Cobourg,
Ontario (1 hr east of Toronto).  It uses 4' x 1' polystyrene blocks that you
stack, fill with concrete, then finish with whatever sheathing you want
(inside and out).

You see a lot of them around there now - builders have come to accept them,
especially self-builders - but not so often elsewhere.  They just got a huge
contract to set up an assembly line for the in Japan.

The address for information is:

AAB Building System
840 Division St.
Cobourg, Ontario
K9A 4J9

(905) 373-0004 fax (905) 373-0002

Another Canadian Company is building "plastic homes" - where they make the
forms out of (recycled?) plastic, fill them with concrete, and leave the
forms in place afterwards.  It will apparently withstand hurricanes.  They
also sell it on the immense thermal mass, which I suppose you could isolate
from the outdoors via exterior insulation.  They add that they don't have to
kill trees either.

The idea is to finish the inside walls with the finish of your choice, but
the model home leaves the plastic walls open to view - a very weird house -
live living inside a plastic lunch box.  They too just scored a big contract
to build homes in Japan.

The company is Royal Plastics, based in North York, Ontario, (416) 749-5131.
I am NOT recommending this, just passing along some info.

Russell Mawby
Toronto
cohosoc [at] web.apc.org