It can be challenging to make a living as a contractor at the best of times. Material costs are constantly on the rise, qualified labor is getting harder to find, and your work schedule is at the whim of the housing market and mother nature.
Compared to monolithic slab foundations, crawl spaces are much more complicated to construct—which is correlated to higher expenses. On average, crawl spaces cost more than fifty percent of the amount of a standard slab foundation.
Due to the materials used to construct crawl spaces and the greater potential for problems with mold, rot, and pests, crawl spaces have a shorter average lifespan than concrete slab foundations. A damp, dark, enclosed crawl space can make an inviting
breeding ground for mold, mildew, and pests. If left unchecked, this can create serious foundation problems. However, you can still expect a crawl space foundation to last close to a full lifetime with proper maintenance.
Let’s start with a bit of background on monolithic foundations and why they are such a good choice for builders who want to be more efficient. Monolithic slabs took off during the building boom that followed World War II. With war veterans returning to their families or starting families of their own in communities across the country, the pressure was on them to complete houses quickly. Builders discovered that it was cheaper and faster to pour a concrete slab foundation than to frame a floor with posts, beams, joists, and sheathing. This type of foundation incorporates insulation during the construction, reducing the number of steps you have to take to get the foundation done.
One of the most difficult and time-consuming steps of a building project is pouring the footings and constructing the foundation. The time and work that goes into this process have, in great part, been reduced with the popularizing of slab-built homes and frost-protected shallow foundation designs. But, as we all know, it is still a tedious process that can take days to complete, even on small projects.
The site must be excavated and leveled, and then there is the forming, pouring of concrete, form removal, and backfill. In some cases, this process can be repeated multiple times. As a contractor, you understand that all this means a lot of wasted time and money spent.
While there have been a few innovations that have made the job easier and results more precise, there haven’t been many strides that have revolutionized the industry at the ground level. That is until now.
There is a new method of pouring monolithic slabs that eliminates much of the time and labor. It reduces what once took days to complete to just a few hours of work. We are talking about Mono Slab® EZ Form. The most obvious monetary benefit that Mono Slab® EZ Form offers is in terms of labor costs. By allowing you to form, insulate, backfill, and pour in one easy process, what normally amounts to days of work, can be accomplished in a matter of a few hours.
