Three very special high-end custom homes are being constructed in Monterey, Calif., all using insulating concrete formwork for the walls. The largest, which will become the home of owner/developer Geoffrey de Sibert, is 8000 square feet and has been dubbed the Yellow House. The other two are 6200 square feet each. Currently, the smaller Orange House-what is being called a 'spec' home-is complete and on the market for $5.25 million, while the larger home remains under construction. The third home should break ground this spring.
The concrete exterior walls for the first two homes are constructed with ICFs supplied by Reward Wall System. The roofing for both homes is 100-year-old roof tiles imported from Spain while the ICF faces, inside and out, were plastered with mortar and then coated with an earth-toned hydrated lime from France. The floors are mainly terra cotta tile custom made by a pair of octogenarian Spanish craftsmen. Many of the doors are from the 18th century-part of a collection of thousands of wood doors de Sibert and his wife came across in Spain. French stone is used in the window sills.
The Yellow House also will be equipped with a rooftop photovoltaic system and a solar heating system to heat the swimming pool water. Radiant heating was placed in the floors using Warmboard subflooring attached to 4-inch concrete floors.
For de Sibert, it's a model of the homes he grew up in. "We were driven by solidity and silence," said de Sibert who is partnering with realtor Jim Poulton and contractor Tony Schaurer, a former aeronautical engineer. "Energy savings is less of a factor in Monterey because it seldom gets extremely cold or hot," he said. "What we liked was the idea of building solid-building for centuries, not decades."
