Local Materials for the New Southern Home - Part 1

Local Materials for the New Southern Home - Part 1

In February I posted "Can Southern Homes be Green?", and it got me thinking about the availability of local materials today. So I did a little research...

To recap my earlier post, LEED gives points in Materials and Resources if 20% of the materials used are manufactured - and if 50% are - within 500 miles. I stated that very little of the old Southern Home came from over 50 miles away! I decided to open my circle a bit from 50 miles, but stay well below LEED's 500 mile allowance. So I looked for construction materials that are manufactured, harvested, extracted or recovered within 100 miles of Birmingham (where 45% of my work has been built). This circle includes most of mid-Alabama. I will also include some interesting local materials from slightly outside this circle -especially if there are compelling green attributes. Let's start with stone, concrete and masonry:

•·         One of the most interesting materials is available from Alabama Marble in Sylacauga. They quarry and mill Alabama White Marble, a high quality stone that is one of the whitest marbles in the world. I have used it in the rotunda floor of the Alabama Supreme Court, and more recently in the Kitchen pictured above.

•·         Alabama has a beautiful vein of limestone near Russellville. It has the quality and appearance of Indiana Gray limestone, and is quarried by Vetter Stone . You can see it on the ionic columns and entablature of the Cumberland School of Law.

•·         Natural Sandstone is quarried in Oneonta. The home on the left shows this lovely local sandstone with limestone arches.  Sandstone can be found at Lamb Stone.  You'll find several more quarries along Sand Mountain, but they're hard to find on the internet.

•·         Concrete is a very local material. The main raw material used in making concrete is lime, which is quarried all over Shelby County. The plants where concrete is turned into a construction material are all over the place. When concrete is poured into the truck, it starts setting up! Therefore the plants are usually within 30 miles of any likely construction site - less in urban areas where there's traffic. I just looked in Yellowbooks.com and found 11 plants in the Birmingham area.

•·         Concrete Block is manufactured by Superrock Block Company, which is located near the Birmingham Airport.

•·         Brick is available from Boral Bricks in Bessemer and Phenix City, Henry Brick in Selma, Jenkins in Wetumpka, Montgomery, Coosada and Moody. This picture is of the Boral Plant in Bessemer, which is less than 10 miles from my office.

I am so excited about the vast collection of local materials available to use!  Call me and we'll use them on the new Southern Home I can design for you!