Photo Gallery> The Sumrall Showcase Home Visit our 6,800 sq. ft showhome and see for yourself. Talk to the owners, tour the house, get a feel for what Grid-WALL is all about.  Located in the tranquil Hill Country, this amazing home is located about 8 miles from Rolling Oaks Mall, (1604 at Nacogdoches). You are invited to visit our show home, simply make an appointment with our office first.  We invite visitors into this private home four times each year immediately following the free workshop held at our manufacturing plant.  For workshop dates, see our schedule.  To make a private appointment, contact our office. From the Owners, Orb and Claudette Sumrall Here is some more information on the construction of our house: Robert Allison was the builder. Our house was the 3rd Grid-WALL structure he had done, but by far the largest. Robert estimated that it would take him 14 months to build the house. It only took 10 months. He used a crew that had worked on Grid-WALL only one time before, but took to it easily. The work was being done during the winter, so it was cold hard work. The best decision they made was to rent an EZ Lift - a scissor lift. It could roll around on the slab and lift the blocks up the level they needed them to be. It saved a lot of time and effort. The total slab, including all garages and porches, came out to about 9400 square feet. Orb's garage is a separate building. Orb's garage is technically heated and air conditioned, but it has been turned on only one time. It is 1150 square feet. His garage has a full bath, and a "kitchen" area. The main house, heated and air conditioned, is 5200 square feet, but some of that is not really floor space (the hole in the loft over the living room), but does count as conditioned cubic footage. It is 3 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, 2 fireplaces. The guest apartment is 850 square feet, with a kitchen and full bath. The air conditioning system uses a zoned system.  There are three separate compressors for the main house and the guest apartment.  A two and a half ton, a two ton, and a one and a half ton.  Orb's garage has a separate one and a half ton unit.  We saved over $9,000 in the air conditioning system over what it would have cost had we used traditional wood framing to build with. The house was poured in 2 lifts, with the first level (85% of the walls) taking 16 hours. The second the third levels were poured at one time, taking about 12 hours. We used about 1300 blocks for the exterior walls.  Total concrete usage was 71 cubic yards. The Flash Photo Gallery You must have Flash Player installed on your computer to view the gallery.  If you do not have it, you can get it directly from Macromedia.com. To view an album, click on it. To view an image in the album, click on the thumbnail in the sliding strip.  To see a caption for an image, move the mouse up to the enlarged image.  To see the list of albums again, click on the "album icon" in the lower right hand corner of the gallery.   Energy Bills for the Showcase Home Electric Bills Month   Amount  4/27/05   114.81  5/26/05   126.60  6/27/05   301.69  7/26/05   307.42  8/25/05   350.59  9/27/05   435.99 10/26/05   185.42 11/23/05   107.88 12/27/05   213.07  1/26/06   132.95  2/23/06   104.74  3/27/06   99.44 Here are our electric bills. Electricity is used for cooling and well pump.  Propane Bills Month   Amount  5/18/05   194.27  9/21/05   161.92  1/04/06   596.58  2/11/06   239.78  3/22/06   394.59 Here are the propane bills for the entire time we've been in the house. Propane is used to cook, heat water for the 2 "on-demand" hot water heaters, start fires in the fireplace, and heat the house in the winter. A few months ago, we could hear the heater running, and assumed that everything was ok. But when the 2nd cold front (26 degrees) came in, the house kept getting cooler and cooler. When it got to 64 degrees we realized that the heaters were not working. It turned out they had not been working for 6 weeks! The adjustment for propane had not been done right. Due to a lot of demand, the repairman could not get to us for 4 more days. We told him it was ok--we were comfortable enough, and for him to take care of the families whose houses were 48 degrees. We burned a fire every evening in the LR fireplace only. The coldest the house got to was 61 degrees. This is due to the combination that thermal mass and insulation can do. The house will basically have only 2 seasons a year, as it changes its thermal mass very slowly.