Is there an affordable green solution to the lumber & labor shortage?
A startup in Windsor, California thinks so.
BamCore, an innovative company that green engineers a bamboo-wood hybrid framing solution, won the 2021 Ivory Innovations Prize for Affordable Building. Each year The Ivory Prize recognizes ambitious, feasible, and scalable solutions for housing affordability. BamCore, a startup with headquarters in Windsor, CA, recently opened a factory in Ocala, Florida, to meet the demand for sustainable building materials amid the housing and climate crisis.
“The Ivory Prize is the benchmark of integrity in healthy and affordable housing. To have the Ivory Team validate our mission and years of hard work is an honor and a giant step to realizing our dream of affordably decarbonizing the built environment.” -Zack Zimmerman, Director, Business Development/CMO of BamCore.
The construction industry is struggling to keep up with the demand for new housing. With lumber prices skyrocketing and a skilled labor shortage, the BamCore framing solution comes at an opportune time. Made from highly renewable and fast-growing timber bamboo, BamCore isn’t tied to traditional US lumber prices. The Prime Walls are a beauty of engineering. They are stronger, healthier, and safer than conventional stud-based walls. Also, they have solved the crux of the housing crisis puzzle, how to build quickly with less labor. In a nutshell, the BamCore framing solution encompasses both the housing and the climate crisis in one affordable building package.
How do they do it?
The BamCore structural framing solution uses a quickly erected dual-panel design that creates a nearly studless wall. Attached to a traditional bottom and top wood plate, the cavity can be easily sized to fit the climate needs of any location. For colder and hotter climates, it costs pennies instead of dollars to make the wall thicker and better insulated. Moreover, BamCore custom fabricates each panel at the factory according to the specific architectural plan. To increase job site efficiency and reduce rework waste, every opening for doors, windows, outlets, etc., is precisely cut to millimeter accuracy at the factory. Even complicated ceiling angles are easily accommodated. The panels are numbered sequentially, and a nail pattern and map for the electrical and plumbing placement are color printed directly onto the panels. A crew of three apprentice laborers with only nail guns can frame 2,800 sqft in 4 hours.
The easy-to-erect stud-less wall design is brilliant. And, it is made possible by the tensile and compressive strength of fast-growing timber bamboo. It comes with the bonus of reducing operational energy costs. Since over 80% of studs, headers, and posts are eliminated, less thermal energy is lost (and the building is quieter). This increases the efficiency of the insulation for a comfortable home with minimal trips to the thermostat. By reducing waste, labor, and operational costs, BamCore is providing an affordable green building solution.
“At BamCore we change both the materials that we build with and the methods we build. Only by doing both can we address the global housing and climate change crises,” said Hal Hinkle, BamCore’s CEO. “The internationally judged Ivory Prize recognizes the need to change both. And by scaling our solution, we’ll be able to lower the carbon, cost, and labor of our built environment,” Hinkle added.
