Mehmet Yigit’s Sturgeon County home is quiet, cosy, and completely fireproof.
He demonstrated that by having his son take a blowtorch to a spare wall block he had leftover from its construction. Even after a minute of fire, the block wasn’t even charred.
“We are not using any metal rebar,” Yigit said in his slight Turkish accent, when describing the house – the columns are made from basalt, and the walls and roof from insulated blocks of his own design. The windows are triple-pane models imported from Europe, and the banisters, despite their oaken looks, are concrete.
“If tomorrow my gas line goes off, I don’t worry,” he said – the home’s insulation is so good he can heat the whole place with one small heater.
And you can get all this for about the cost of a regular home, said Yigit.
“You will save tonnes and tonnes of money.”
Yigit, the founder of MYBloc Construction, owns the home just north of Sturgeon Valley Fertilizer and the Hwy. 37 overpass on Hwy. 2. He’s throwing it open to visitors this weekend as part of the Eco-Solar Home Tour.
The free tour gives people a chance to see how owners are saving money and the environment through better home construction, said Andrew Mills of the Eco-Solar Home Tour Society of Alberta.
“This isn’t something in the future,” he emphasized – this is stuff people are doing right now.
This year’s tour features 21 Edmonton-area homes that are either net-zero in terms of energy use or demonstrate unique energy-saving technologies, Mills said. Guests can visit as many homes as they like and speak directly with the people behind them.
Mills applauded Yigit for his innovative use of polystyrene and concrete construction.
“They’ve decided to take things into their own hands and try making a completely new way to build a home.”
Building blocks
Yigit, who has 32 years of experience working with stucco and concrete, said he got the idea for his block system while working up in Fort McMurray on homes built with insulated concrete forms – a system where you have polystyrene walls with concrete insides.“The owner asked me how I could fireproof the wall,” Yigit said, so he developed a stucco-like coating and had it flame-tested by the National Research Council of Canada.
Five years and a small fortune later, and he’d invented a coated polystyrene block with an R60 insulation value – a heat retention factor normally seen in only the most efficient homes. The outside of the brick was fireproof, and the inside so well insulated that his daughter used one to keep an ice-cube solid for 72 hours.
Insulated concrete forms require great skill and specialized equipment to build with, Yigit said. With his block system, he was able to build this home with standard tools and the help of two people. All you have to do is stack the blocks, fill the holes inside them with a grout-like mix, and add basalt support columns.
The block system means you can build whatever shape home you want, Yigit said. He originally wanted to make a dome-shaped one, but his wife vetoed that, joking that it would look like a mosque. They went with a round kitchen as a compromise.
Yigit said he spends about $150 a month on gas to heat this 6,000 square foot luxury home – much less than the $270 a month he averaged in his old 1,200 square foot one. The home’s insulation keeps out both the scorching summer heat and highway traffic noise.
Yigit said he planned to build more homes with this system in St. Albert and Parkland County, estimating that he could make it 30 per cent more efficient as he refines it. He suspects the system will catch on, as it offers net-zero levels of insulation at no extra cost.
“The people should go for this because it’s very comfortable living.”
The Eco-Solar tour runs June 2 and 3 from noon to 4:30 p.m. or 10 a.m. to 4:30 in the case of Yigit’s home. Visit ecosolar.ca for maps to the homes.
