OK… poor attempt at ‘click bait’… let’s just cut to the chase… he loved it… well eventually he did!
The property in question was originally featured in 2018. Deep-sea diver Adrian Corrigall and his wife Megan wanted to build the perfect 21st-century country house out of concrete for their family.
Could you live in a car park? That was the question posed by Grand Designs UK host Kevin McCloud after making it halfway through the build.
Adrian and Megan Corrigall of East Sussex wanted to use an experimental insulated concrete for their build, as Adrian was a keen BMX rider who fell in love with concrete after spending hours at the skate park in his younger years. Adrian just loved the way that concrete could be moulded into smooth curves and shapes and decided to create a statement house from the same material.
Kevin McCloud agreed in many ways with Alex, as he too was of a generation when architects got excited about concrete in the 1960s. But the resulting Brutalist buildings they built were invariably large public edifices, not houses… like this one!
The concrete that was used for the build came from the ground breaking company Cemex, and it used their ground breaking products Resila (Fibre Reinforced Concrete), Permatite (Integral Waterproof Concrete), Evolution (Self-compacting concrete) and Insularis (Thermal Insulating Concrete).
Resilia is a highly advanced, fiber-reinforced concrete technology; the concrete itself being very strong and ductile. In this case, Stainless Steel fibres were used in the concrete, which added a massive amount of strength to it. The Stainless Steel fibres partially or even completely eliminate the need for rebar or steel mesh in a project, offering considerable cost ant time savings.
And the budget? Up to £400,000 was quoted, but it ended up at £450,000. Overall, totalling the cost of the land and the house, the end price has come in at nearly a million pounds. "I started this a bit cocky," says Adrian. "There were periods when I thought I might have broken it (his relationship with Megan). It's a big thing for me to come here and see how pleased she is with it."
At the end of build: McCloud confessed that he loved it. "It's full of all of the flaws and imperfections and idiosyncrasies we all have. The materials are cold, but in their hands, this house is as warm, generous and welcoming as they are."
It’s worth a watch this one, and the result is definitely a ‘marmite’ house. The use of our Stainless Steel in a house like this would be perfect, from our Stainless Steel Kitchens and Extractors to Stainless Steel Sinks. And to finish with, here’s a concrete joke: How do you start a concrete race? Ready...... set........
Images: Stuff, The Sun