Sustainable Churchs with Insulating Concrete Forms
October 27th, 2009 | From the Field, Project Showcase, Unique Trends | churches, religious, religious market, susta, Sustainable Design, tom reilly
One market where ICFs have had significant activity recently is in the construction of new churches and religious buildings. In a particular market area, we have 5 projects currently under construction and a number of others in the works. As of this writing, The Hopevale Church in Michigan, the New Beginnings United Methodist Church in New York, the Portage Community Chapel in Ohio, the Manheim Brethren In Christ (BIC) Church in Pennsylvania and the Celebrate Life church in Lancaster, PA have all started projects using Reward. Tom R, our regional sales manager, began to wonder why so many of these church building committees were turning to Reward insulating concrete forms for their projects and he got some excellent insights from a few committee members.
Tom spoke with Ed Denlinger who sits on the building committee for the Manheim BIC. Manheim had built its Youth Center last year using Reward and currently has its new Sanctuary under construction, also with Reward. Denlinger said that the main reasons they decided to go with Reward are competitive first costs, energy savings, sound attenuation and building strength.
“We are going to be here for a while,” Denlinger says. “When we evaluated the costs of Reward versus traditional CMU cavity wall with added insulation, cost in essence became a non-factor. With continuing increases in energy costs, the performance of the building became key and it was a no-brainer.”
The building sits close to the street in a commercial area, so keeping the sounds of the church activities inside and the noise of the nearby street out were also added benefits.
Finally, Denlinger noted that finishing the building has been a simple process because they weren’t limited in terms of what they could use. Drywall application on the interior is easy and whether it’s a brick or an acrylic finish, it didn’t matter because both work well with Reward ICFs.
The sustainability of ICFs shows immense potential for the religious building markets. Churches from hundreds of years ago are still standing tall, as they should be intended to- granted they took intense manual labor and YEARS to build (between 8-22 years in some instances). But now with uses of concrete in ICFs these structures will still be standing, and they have the flexibility to be designed with any old world architectural inspirations or new age trends as well. Either way it will house a congregational community for a lifetime.
We’ll update this project as it finishes up!
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