Affordable housing project hits milestone

Work on two new homes, being developed through a Lee County affordable housing program funded with federal and state dollars, has quickly reached a construction milestone.

"The building envelope for the first duplex was completed in less than two weeks. The second should be finished in less than a week," said Bob Cantu, president of Building Contractors of SWFLA, Inc., the Fort Myers-based general contractor on both homes. "That's fast, and that's with only six guys, total, on both job sites."

The building envelopes of the two 2,163-square-foot duplexes at 302 Danley Drive (at First Street) and at 301 Center Road, are being constructed with steel framing and the use of the structural insulated panel (SIP). A SIP is a structural sandwich panel that consists of a foam plastic insulation core bonded between two steel facing sheets. The SIPs are bolted to the steel frame and all joints are sealed.

"The homeowners will have superstrong, air-tight, highly insulated homes that will require much less energy to cool and almost no effort to maintain," says Scott Bartels, chief operating officer of Fort Myers-based element, LLC.

And their homes will be virtually storm-proof. A large custom home built on the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean with this building system withstood a Category 5 hurricane, Bartels said.

The homes each will cost a little less than the $243,000 ceiling set by Lee County Human Services and Housing and the U.S. Department of Urban Development. Funding sources include federal entitlement dollars and Florida's affordable housing trust.