Couple’s dream house is rock-solid dwelling

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 19, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Susan and Danny Nelson are building their dream house.

It’s not an investment, it’s not a house they want to flip later for a profit and it’s not a fancy status symbol.
“It’s going to be our legacy,” Susan Nelson said.

Something else it’s not: a typical wood-frame house.

The new Nelson home, under construction on Landmark Drive in Lexington Estates, is being made of concrete.

Specifically, it’s an Insulated Concrete Form home with the slab and 11-inch thick walls made of concrete.

Why concrete?

Susan Nelson and builder Rick Vinyard II, of Precision Construction Group Inc., said the house will be fire resistant, termite resistant and able to withstand hurricane winds of up to 250 mph.

Vinyard and Nelson also said that once inside the completed home, residents won’t even hear sirens or trains whiz by outside.

“But also you don’t get good cell phone reception, so you have to step outside,” Nelson said, laughing.

The concrete home will also reduce energy costs significantly, Vinyard and Nelson said.

Vinyard has guaranteed the Nelsons it will cost no more than $65 a month to heat and cool the home.
Nelson said she and her husband want their house to last forever.

“Or at least the 60 or 70 years we will hopefully have in the home,” she said.

The Nelsons don’t have kids and have never built a house before. Right now, the couple live in Sherwood Forest.