Rebecca Blankenship
Siskin Partners
Marketing and Awards Director
858.259.1500 x 10
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Villages at Rio del Sol Wins “Innovative Use of Concrete Award”
The Villages at Rio del Sol was honored by The American Concrete Institute’s Southern California Chapter tonight with The 2004 Innovative Use of Concrete in Construction Award. The American Concrete Institute is a technical and educational society with almost 17,000 members and 96 chapters in 34 countries.
The Villages at Rio del Sol is an innovative subdivision in Cathedral City, California that utilizes an insulating concrete form, called ECO-Block, in place of standard wood framing. Insulating concrete forms are panels or hollow blocks, made of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), that a construction crew stacks to create the exterior walls of a residential building. Workers then add reinforcing steel and fill the gap (typically 4” to 8”) between the two layers of foam with concrete. The combination of concrete, steel, and foam create a formidably strong and energy-efficient structure. Once the concrete has hardened, it becomes a monolithic, reinforced core of incredible strength.
The ECO-Block is utilized in all of the exterior walls for the Tuscan and Desert Modern style homes, creating both an energy-efficient exterior wall package generating up to an R-40 rating and a 50-80% reduction in energy use for the homeowner. ECO-Block homes are stronger, quieter, and more resistant to fire, moisture, mold and the elements than any other homes using Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs).
The Villages at Rio del Sol was awarded The Charles Pankow Jr. and Excellence in Concrete Awards because our use of concrete is truly innovative. Never before has the ECO-Block been used in Southern California in as grand of a scale as we are using it.