Steve and Jackie Smith turned to the Concrete Thinkers at Farr Associates of Chicago when they wanted to design a home that wouldn’t “end up in a landfill 50 years from now.” Large windows throughout the home capturing the sun and insulating concrete wall systems keeping the heat in help the Prairie Grove, Ill., home achieve the family’s green goals.


The family concerns this their "sustainable dream home." The building is basically one room deep with a long southern exposure. This orientation maximizes winter solar gain and daylighting, while shading blinding hot, east/west exposures. Direct low/high cross ventilation also helps to moderate temperatures throughout the year.

Precast concrete floor planks were leveled with a vaulted topping slab system derived from Roman times. The result is a design that does quadruple duty as the structural floor system, offers thermal mass for a passive solar heating system, provides radiant heat through an airducting system and enhances the beauty of the home with a stained floor finish.

Significant energy savings are achieved through the use of an insulated concrete wall system on the home’s exterior. The wall system is an R-35; whereas a typical 2-by-4 wood frame wall might have R-factor of 13 to 17. This wall system is similar to the adobe homes build by native Americans thousands of years ago, which retained cool air during the day and transmitted stored heat back into the home at night.