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Kathy and Ronald Leo decided their new “forever home” in Mallard Lakes should be made of concrete. But Kathy Leo says it wasn’t easy finding a builder who could handle the unusual request, until Leo met Rick Vinyard of Precision Construction at a home and garden show.

“I just happened to walk past Rick’s booth, and I asked him if he knew anything about ICF [insulating concrete forms] houses, and he lit up,” Kathy Leo says. “He was the only one that I had talked to that didn’t think I was insane.”

ICFs are insulated molds shaped like Styrofoam bricks that are stacked and filled with concrete and steel reinforcing bars to form the basic wall structure of a building. The technology, which goes back to the 1960s, has been gaining popularity in other parts of the country for more than a decade but remains something of a novelty here.

Vinyard is the capital area’s foremost, and perhaps only, active ICF builder. He worked on a number of such homes in Colorado years ago, but the Leos were his first ICF customers in Baton Rouge.

“The owners don’t know much about it,” Vinyard says. “There aren’t that many builders that know much about it.”

Proponents claim you can’t build a stronger, greener house, saying ICF buildings are resistant to fires and termites, are nearly soundproof, can withstand 250-mile per hour winds and can provide energy savings of up to 50%.

Lane Thompson Construction

FILL IN THE BLOCKS: Lane Thompson (left) led the construction of the ICF portion of LaHouse, a demonstration project of the LSU AgCenter. ICFs are insulated molds shaped like Styrofoam bricks that are stacked and filled with concrete and steel reinforcing bars to form the basic wall structure of a building.

But they’re not cheap. Vinyard says the average cost of an ICF house is about 10% more than a comparable wood-frame house. Joe Didier, president of the Capital Region Builders Association, says it’s probably more like 15%.

“It’s very, very hard to justify the cost of doing that as opposed to the cost of stick building,” Didier says. “You reach a point where the payback is not worth the investment.”

Didier says the labor pool of people in this area who know how to build an ICF home is quite shallow. Stick building is tried and true and, if done right, can result in a house that can last a century. But in coastal areas, he says ICF might be the way to go.

“I wouldn’t hesitate if I was building in Grand Isle to do it,” he says.

Lane Thompson, a general contractor and LSU graduate, builds ICF homes in the Florida Panhandle. He says ICF is more competitive in Florida because of the state’s more stringent building codes, and he says some communities in his area actually mandate ICF for all new construction.

He says building with ICFs is relatively simple. Thompson led the construction of the ICF portion of LaHouse, a demonstration project of the LSU AgCenter. He took a group of LSU students with no prior knowledge of the technology and built the wall structure in two weekends. It’s a relatively simple way to build, he argues. If you have one person who’s done it before, that person can take almost any crew and build an ICF house.

No matter where you live, an ICF house can make you feel safer, he believes. If there’s a hurricane, tornado, fire, whatever, “chances are you’ve got minimal damage compared to everyone around you,” he says.

Susan Nelson is another Vinyard client. Her ICF house in Lexington Estates should be done by October, and Vinyard has guaranteed the electric bills for her 3,013-square-foot house won’t exceed $65 a month.

“We wanted to build a very energy-efficient house,” she says.

Kathy and Ronald Leo

LIKE ANY OTHER HOUSE: Kathy and Ronald Leo’s ‘forever home’ in Mallard Lakes takes shape from ICF blocks to near completion with the addition of exterior elements.

Nelson says finding a lender wasn’t easy. And surprisingly, local insurers don’t seem willing to give her a break on her wind and hail coverage; apparently, they don’t know much about ICF either.

“Insurance is going to catch on,” Vinyard says. Nelson is doing her part to educate others on her blog, bayounelson.blogspot.com.

Her future neighbors and passers-by have been fascinated by the work in progress, which, once the forms have been snapped together and the concrete has been poured, looks like a giant foam ice chest. Once the exterior elements are added on, however, an ICF house looks like any other house; in this case, with a stucco and limestone exterior.

“People are going to have to see it looks like a regular house,” she says.