Builder brings steel frame homes to Omaha

[eomaha]

Builder brings his homes to Omaha

The sun glints off the steel of one of the houses under construction in the Copperfields subdivision near 204th and F Streets in Omaha.

There's so much steel that a couple driving by stops to ask about it.

The house getting attention is one of Omaha's first to be built with steel framing, and it's one of 25 planned over the next year by a builder new to the city.

Bill Walker of Salix, Iowa, has been building seven to 10 steel-framed houses a year for five years, and he's decided the time is right to bring the option to Omaha.

The price of steel vs. wood has never been as close as it is now, Walker said, and that removes the most common barrier to talking about the other attributes of steel: strength, consistency, energy efficiency, design flexibility and resistance to termites, wind and other hazards.

Still, Walker knows he has some selling to do. He's trying to break a 200-year tradition of building wood-framed houses.

"Building a home is easy," he said. "Educating the public is the hardest thing I do on a daily basis."

Walker and his NP Dodge Real Estate salesman, David Bartlett, plan to answer questions at an open house for real estate professionals from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 18 and for the general public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Jan. 22 and 23. The house at 20179 Nina St. is expected to be enclosed but still have the framing visible.

Walker also is working with the national Steel Framing Alliance to bring a six-hour presentation to Omaha for code-enforcement officials in Nebraska and Iowa.

A steel-framed house is very unusual for Omaha, said Susan Kelley, superintendent of Omaha's permits and inspection division. She could think of only one or two others built before.

Nationally, fewer than 5 percent of homes have steel frames, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Steel framing is recognized by Omaha's building code, but Kelley said city inspectors will have to familiarize themselves with it. "It's a different medium, with different spans and connections than wood."

Neil Smith, chief marketing officer for Hearthstone Homes, which sold 850 houses in 2004, said the company periodically studies the possibility of switching from wood to steel framing but so far has concluded that the industry has some issues to work out first.

Some of the issues Hearthstone is concerned about, he said, are whether the company could count on ready distribution of adequate supplies of steel and the retraining of workers.

What attracts the company, Smith said, is that steel is a less volatile commodity. Lumber has dramatic swings in prices, while steel prices had remained fairly constant until recently. Steel is a more consistent, more available long-term commodity, he said.

Smith called steel a more renewable commodity. Even though the lumber industry has done a good job of replenishing forests, steel is more easily recycled, he said.

"It is the future in the long term," Smith said.

Walker said he doesn't have distribution issues. He said that with three to five weeks of lead time, he can get any component he needs from sources around the upper Midwest. Eventually, he plans to have the equipment to finish his own components.

Unlike with wood, he doesn't have to worry about steel components warping because of exposure to weather.

And he said that although there is a learning curve for framers switching from wood to steel - and from hammers to drills - it's not a difficult transition. After four or five houses, he said, most crews can frame a house 20 percent faster with steel.

Because of steel's consistency, Walker said, a builder also would get fewer callbacks from homeowners about nail pops and drywall cracks.

"But this is not about the builder," Walker said. "It's about the consumer. They deserve a better product."

A desire for a better-built home is what led Tim Harms to have Walker build a steel-framed home on Harms' family farm outside of Hartington. They moved in in September.

Harms, an engineer for a Yankton, S.D., company, said he spent 10 years researching steel framing after seeing a steel outbuilding built on the farm. What held him back, he said, were limited design options. Most companies, if they did residences at all, offered a limited number of floor plans.

The number grew over time, but advances in the industry more recently gave builders like Walker multiple sources for components and more freedom to adapt floor plans.

Harms said he priced his 2,000-square-foot ranch with both wood framing and with steel in October 2003, and steel was only $1,000 more - worth every penny, he believes, because of the difference in structural integrity and long life it provides.

The steel framing, because it doesn't use load-bearing walls, allowed Harms and his wife to design a huge open kitchen, dining and living room area that wouldn't have been possible with wood framing, he said.

Lower energy bills have been a nice byproduct, too, he said, explaining that the steel frame provides wider wall cavities than conventional wood framing, allowing for thicker insulation.

Walker, who started out as a sheet-metal worker, saw his first steel-framed house in Denton, Texas, in 1995. Most of the steel-framed homes in this country have been built in California, Florida, Texas and Hawaii.

Walker spent five years researching that method of home-building.

"I couldn't find any logical explanation not to do it," he said. "It just made too much sense."

It's not new technology, Walker said, just technology that's been made more cost-effective for single-family homes because of advances in cold-rolled steel forming equipment and computer design. Most of the components are engineered, requiring little cutting on site.

In addition, he said, building codes have become more standardized nationally over the past 10 years.

Walker likes the green aspects of steel framing. He says each home he builds will save an acre of forest and remove six motor vehicles from a junkyard. He points to his small barrel holding construction waste, compared with the large trash containers at other job sites.

Bartlett of NP Dodge said he hopes the energy-conserving features of the home Walker is building on speculation and listing for $295,000 will appeal to move-up buyers, but he knows price matters.

"We're a bottom-line society," Bartlett said. "If you buy a $250,000 house and a steel house is $270,000, we buy the $250,000 house. Now we're at a point we can do steel for the same price as wood. Now you're getting a better product for the same price. The time is right."

[Brad]

Lonnie

Are steel houses safer when it comes to fire or is there so much else to burn?

[lonnie]

Are steel houses safer when it comes to fire or is there so much else to burn?

There is still plenty to burn besides the framing. Note that commercial buildings have sprinkler systems even though they are often built of steel and concrete.

I am guessing, but I would expect a fire would not spread as quickly in a steel framed house as it would in a wood framed house. Steel framing covered with drywall is non-combustible.

The advantages of steel; bugs don't eat it, it doesn't twist or warp or rot... every piece is 'perfect'.

One difference is that a steel house is 'engineered', each steel 'stud' can have a defined thickness (guage). Load bearing walls are of medium guage steel, while interior non-load bearing walls are made of light guage steel... and there can be may different guages used. Because of this most studs are ordered and cut to length. It becomes a big puzzle erecting the house.

[Brad]

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