The Blue Maxx Wallsystem:
Solid Thinking for Your Dream House
This ingenious, patented building system, officially speaking, is based on expanded polystyrene concrete building forms incorporating
insulation, air/vapor barrier and strapping into one clean, permanent lightweight block.
That's a mouthful to say, but what it means is that each interlocking Blue Maxx Block clicks together (like a child's plastic building block set),
to form the foundation and walls of the building and then acts as a mold into which concrete is placed.
But unlike conventional, temporary wooden forms used to shape concrete walls, our expanded polystyrene forms remain forever as an
integral part of the wall, providing at least R25 insulation, air/vapor barrier, and strapping as well.
Each Standard Blue Maxx block is four feet long, sixteen and three-quarters inches high, and eleven and a half inches thick. (That's about the
same size as six standard concrete building blocks. But it weighs only about six pounds.)
The block consists of two panels of expanded polystyrene insulation, two and a half inches thick, held six and a quarter inches* apart by
dense black plastic webbing, spaced at eight inch intervals.
This webbing not only contains grooves into which steel reinforcing rod is snapped to strengthen the concrete that will eventually fill it, but
each web goes through the polystyrene insulation, ending in a vertical black strip spaced every eight inches on the outside of the block.
The strip is the strapping (providing either eight or sixteen inch centers) into which nails or screws can be driven, holding the final interior wall
finishing material (gypsum wallboard or panelling), and outside finishing material (metal, wood or vinyl siding, stucco or brick veneer) that will
give the home its final interior and exterior "look".
As the expanded polystyrene forms its own air/vapor barrier as the blocks lock together, no house wrap or vapor barrier is required.
Below grade, a waterproof membrane is applied to the exterior surface of the Blue Maxx wall, ensuring a dry basement.
*An 8-inch version is also available.
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