| ||||||||||||||||
Yonkers, New York
Site Demonstration: Habitat for Humanity of Westchester (HfHW)
Overview
Habitat for Humanity of Westchester (HfHW) is developing six duplex homes in Yonkers, New York. The HfHW has teamed with PATH and Altus Group, a partnership of major national concrete precasters formed to research and build innovative projects nationally. Altus Group along with HfHW is funding the design and manufacturing of an innovative concrete wall, roof, floor and foundation system, the first of its kind, and is also supplying the concrete floor and roof panels for the demonstration. PATH is providing technical assistance.
The Yonkers duplex homes project will be located at 2 sites, four units at Purser Place and the other 2 at Willow Place. The Willow site will be a two-story over a precast concrete basement and the 4 duplex homes at Purcer will be on a crawlspace foundations. The only site poured concrete will be the basement slab.
The innovative precast concrete system featured in this project is a high performing energy efficient residential system, researched and developed with Oldcastle Precasters, and other Altus partners. The breakthrough system is a complete precast house, erected in close to a day, that is light weight, energy efficient, attractive, cost and resource efficient, and has remarkable fire resistance and durability. The fire resistance quality of these homes plays an important role in this area that has been devastated by numerous killer fires.
The insulated carboncast panel system will be used for the basement foundation walls, first and second floors, exterior walls, and roof. Oldcastle envisions starting with a crane in the morning at a prepared gravel bed on site and erecting the entire house in about a day. The only site placed concrete would be for basement floor slabs. Ultimately, replication of same size panels is key which would drive production efficiency up and costs down. The inner city of Yonkers and other urban areas have many potential vacant infill sites that are a similar small size with infrastructure in place that would benefit from this new precast concrete technology.
The construction is planned to begin February 2005.
PATH Technologies
A wide range of PATH-evaluated technologies and the new delivery methodology will be explored and potentially incorporated, including, but not limited to the precast concrete panel wall, floor and roof system, high performance windows, Energy Star rating, drywall clips and stops, pre-finished drywall corners, waste water heat recovery devices, energy efficient ventilation system, compact fluorescent light fixtures, and Energy Star appliances. All technologies will be optimum value engineered through a systems approach.
|
Status Updates
January 2005 - An agreement was reached with Yonkers and the State Architect on zoning and construction issues, allowing project to proceed as planned. Panel shop drawings for wall and foundation precast panels are being finalized for casting in late January. The building permit for Willow is expected soon. Water and sewer lines for Purcer Place are being designed by a civil engineer.
December 2004 - The design drawings were reviewed and the resulting comments have been responded to. Revised NY energy calculations were made and submitted, and the State Architect was called in due to an innovative precast insulated demising wall. A few issues remain to be resolved including choices of vented or non-vented crawl spaces for Purcer, crawlspace ground treatment, and soils bearing pressure at this site. The floor/roof systems have been cast and it is the current team desire to erect all six units (two at Willow Place and four at Purcer Place) at the same time.
Content updated on 1/19/2005