Faswall block

Faswall Block

One of the visitors and fellow future castle-builders here suggested this material to be of potential interest. I spent a few minutes looking through the site to get some information about it, and in a nutshell: Treated woodchips with a cement coating formed into CMU-like blocks. It has better insulative qualities than straight CMU, can be dry-stacked, and supposedly is mold-free. Also stated that it is similar in cost to ICF or SIP, and supervised unskilled labor may be used for installation - great for owner-builders, they say.

My thoughts are mixed after reading about it. Cement is hygroscopic, and one should never place wood structure directly in contact with stone or cement, it rots faster; but the site says that rot isn't an issue. I wonder why? Are there additives preventing rot? Also, I'm curious about the engineering data on these blocks: How high can they be stacked? How much weight can they bear? Also, at a cost comparable to ICF and SIP, is this with or without labor? And if the cost is similar to ICF, and ICF provides a higher R value, why go with these blocks at all? Also with the expense of the needed cement reinforcement, the total outlay maybe comparable to ICF or SIP. 

I don't mean to sound negative about the product, it looks pretty neat; and I'm all for someone making a green product that is good for an owner-builder to use. I've done lots of research on alternative building methods and materials, and often they don't turn out to be all that they're cracked up to be, so I'm reserving judgment on this one. My concerns may be simply because I'm uninformed. I hope it does well, and certainly would consider it as a material in the future.

Thanks for the link, Gary.

Dry spell

Well, I haven't made too many posts lately. It would appear that I've found most all, if not all, of the owner built castles that are currently available on the web via popular search engines. Having kept an eye on the site almost daily, it seems that the all-time high of daily visitors was around 20 and has leveled off to around 6-8 per day. I really was never sure how much traffic a site like this would generate, so I guess I'm pleased that anyone is stopping by at all. There are a lot of search terms used that lead folks to this site, the most common are people looking for a few of the popular castles like DuPont castle, and the rest is a mish-mash of search terms that have to do with building castles from stone or other modern materials. This is kind of surprising in a way, because it means that there are several people that would like to know how to build a modern castle. That's great! I wish I had more concrete information to give the searchers, especially along the lines of "this is how I did it...".

I've also had a couple of inquiries from material vendors that have found the site and are interested in telling me about their wares. I always write back, but it appears that they haven't really looked at the site too closely; especially the parts of it that essentially say that I have no money... Funny, once they hear that they never write me back! So for vendors that happen across the site, don't run away! I'm happy to take information about your product as long as you can provide specifics as to how it may be applied to modern castle building, exactly how it would be done with your product and what benefit or support you, your product, or your company would provide an owner builder.

At some point, I'll put together a "standard castle" model with floors, square footage, exterior windows, walls, and doors. Differing materials can be applied to the structure so it can be used as standard cost gauge for walls, foundation, and floors is in a rough cost per square foot output.

As always, if anyone knows of a castle that is currently being built by the owners or owner-builders that are living in their own castle, I'd be happy to hear about it.