Entrepreneur proposes innovative housing option

At a meeting last Thursday with the Lake County Commissioners, Keith DeVille offered an overview of the “big idea” that he and his partners are planning and why.

“The problem with conventionally built homes is they’re very expensive to build, slow to construct, they require significant coordination of trades, and often are delayed by the unpredictable and extreme weather conditions in Montana,” he said.

“What if you could tap into a new building technology using an innovative way that eliminates at least three major trades, reduces labor requirements and dramatically accelerates the construction timelines to build year around in Montana?” DeVille queried.

Insulated metal panels (IMP), which have been used in commercial construction since the 1960s, are the building materials he’s talking about and DeVille’s team plans to use them for residential housing.

In addition to DeVille, who describes himself as “a team builder and efficient systems maker,” the team includes Mark DeVille, president of Petra Building Systems, and structural engineer Chris Todd. Mark and Todd were on Zoom during the meeting.

DeVille told the commissioners that IMPs have been in use since the 1960s.

Pal Memory Care

DeVille and his wife own three Pal Memory Care facilities, one in St. Ignatius, one in Ronan, and one in Polson. They employ 35 people and provide round-the-clock care to 50 residents. They serve many low-income-people in their facilities including many covered by Medicaid.

One of DeVille’s greatest challenges is to achieve full staffing, especially for the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. That’s especially daunting since PMC competes with local hospitals, group homes, health centers, and Mission Mountain Empowerment.

“I work in creative ways to train people,” he said.

Many of the PMC workers lack stable transportation and/or housing, and DeVille has noticed that if an employee loses stable housing that causes “their life to fall apart.”

So DeVille came up with a plan to offer employees who need stable housing a place to live, a meal plan, and even child care, if necessary.

DeVille’s team closed on a 9,200 sq. ft. building in Ronan in September. The group plans to reconfigure the facility so employees and PMC residents can live there.

Employees would pay $100 rent, $100 for a meal plan, and $100 toward childcare monthly. Income from PMS residents would offset the cost for the residents to live there.

As well as the revamped building, the new group has bigger plans – a 10-duplex pilot project on three acres to house 18 residents with disabling illnesses. DeVille’s group received a $750,000 grant from the State of Montana to house these folks. Some of the duplexes will provide employee housing also.

“It had to be done to keep my business running,” DeVille noted.

Home Front Innovations

The new business that's being formed is called Home Front Innovations and its founders plan to manufacture IMPs in Lake County for use in building affordable residential housing. The panels can be cut to size and built in a factory, which does away with building outside in Montana’s changeable weather.

The panels are so light that a two-man team can put the walls up for a home in a couple of days – exterior walls, interior walls, subfloor, and the roof. This process eliminates the labor and time involved in framing a house.

Also, the insulation, siding, drywall and painting steps are eliminated since the IMDs arrive from the manufacturer painted and finished on both sides with insulation in the middle. They come in three-foot panels up to 53 feet long and with varying thicknesses of up to six inches.

IMPs provide “fantastic R-value,” DeVille said, since their “thermal envelope” is insulation sandwiched into the walls, roof, ceiling and floors. DeVille passed around sections of IMPs, noting that thicker ones had a higher R-value – the rating system for insulation. Some IMPs have a stucco-like appearance; they can be ribbed or smooth.

"We believe we can save 20 to 25 percent – I think this conservative – on labor and 10 percent on total materials so that’s anywhere from 30 to 45 percent saving over stick-built,” DeVille said.  The Company feels it can reduce the current $200 - $300 square foot price for stick-built to $125 per square foot

The initial model will be a two-bedroom, two-bath duplex, with a porch, storage and possibly a breezeway.

The IMPs would be completed with electrical conduit and plumbing and shipped to the building site, where they’d be assembled on gravity blocks measuring 2’by 2’ by 6’ and weighing 3,500 pounds.

In a recent office building that the company built, they used 12 gravity blocks as a foundation, each gravity block costing $50, for a total of $600 instead of a $3,000 or $4,000 for a $1,000 concrete slab. The office building is roughly the same size as one of the duplexes as a cost comparison.

Home Front Innovations has found a 13,000 square foot building to use as a factory so the IMPs could be manufactured in Lake County. The group plans to produce materials for an equivalent of 48 duplexes each year after the pilot project, with further growth dependent on demand from other builders/developers.  The plant, in full production, would employ upwards of 20 full-time people.

The factory is estimated to cost $1.8 million with another $1 million to equip it. The group will be seeking low-interest loans for start-up costs, DeVille told the commissioners. Since the commissioners aren’t in the business of lending money, Billie Lee, director of Special Projects for Lake County, told DeVille and his group that a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) might be available.

Ideally, the Montana Department of Commerce would provide a CDBG to Lake County, based on job creation, to be used for a low-interest loan to the company through Mission West, which would then collect payments and fees. Mission West representatives John Whitworth, Senior Loan Manger, and Westyn Kiehn, Business Development Program Manager, spoke to their interest in further developing the project and potentially providing loans for construction/operations of the factory.

Asking for feedback, DeVille fielded lots of questions related to construction, such as how conduits for electrical and plumbing are installed, the type and size of gravity blocks needed to counter the freeze/thaw cycles in Montana and window installation. 

There were also concerns expressed as to whether the construction would be acceptable to all financing institutions, and meet criteria established by HUD and the Veterans Administration. 

DeVille responded that engineering for all buildings will be required to meet standard building codes. He further stated that the duplexes to be built for the Ronan project will be used as a demonstration project with costs and build-out tracked. 

“Home Front Innovations is only looking for an expression of interest (from the commissioners) today,” Lee said.

They got at least one expression of interest from Barron, who said, “It will fill a niche in our community."

DeVille plans to work with the Mission West Community Development Partnership’s loan department to further develop his business plan and funding alternatives, which may include an application for an economic development grant/loan accessed through the CDBG program.