San­dra Chouthi

Roshan Ba­boolal swears that up to a dozen young mar­ried cou­ples vis­it his of­fice week­ly des­per­ate­ly want­i­ng to find out what they can do to build an af­ford­able home.

Ba­boolal, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the fam­i­ly-owned Therml Im­pact Af­ford­able Homes Com­pa­ny Ltd (TIAH­CO), pro­filed these cou­ples.

"They're in their ear­ly 20s, been mar­ried for about a year, have two in­comes to­talling $15,000, and live with their in-laws," said Ba­boolal, in an in­ter­view at the com­pa­ny's Bil­jah Road, Ch­agua­nas, of­fice, on June 6

Ba­boolal ac­knowl­edges some truths about res­i­den­tial re­al es­tate: there's a de­mand for hous­es which are pricey (up­wards of $700,000) and a short­age of what he de­scribed as "build­able" land, that is, ap­proved for home con­struc­tion. Buy­ing a de­cent piece of land to build a house can set one back by $400,000.

Ba­boolal de­scribes Therml Im­pac tech­nol­o­gy as ex­pe­dit­ed poly­styrene (EPS).

"It's not sty­ro­foam, which is a brand of EPS," Ba­boolal said. "This is an in­dus­tri­al grade brand. We man­u­fac­ture it here. We al­so man­u­fac­ture and sell mould­ings and ceil­ings from spare EPS."

He list­ed the plus­es of build­ing a home from this type of com­pos­ite pan­el:

�2 it's fire re­tar­dent

�2 makes an ex­cel­lent fire­wall

�2 has been in use in the Unit­ed States and Eu­rope for the last 60 years

�2 it's bul­let proof

�2 ex­treme­ly re­sis­tant to earth­quakes that mea­sure 7.5 on the Richter scale

�2 hur­ri­cane re­sis­tant up to 165 miles per hour

�2 sound proof

TIAH­CO bought the Therml Im­pac fran­chise from Therml Im­pac In­ter­na­tion­al in Cal­i­for­nia, Unit­ed States, for US$6 mil­lion for use in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, Guyana and Suri­name in 1997.

"It's not al­lowed to be used in Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States. The fran­chise is ge­o­graph­ic. It caters to the Caribbean hous­ing mar­ket."

In the last 15 years, TIAH­CO has con­struct­ed more than 2,600 mul­ti-fam­i­ly, du­plex­es, town­hous­es and sin­gle fam­i­ly units in Trinidad "all un­der the aus­pices of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion," Ba­boolal said.

Pri­or to go­ing in­to the hous­ing mar­ket, the TIAH­CO Group owned Caribbean Dry­dock Ltd (Cari­doc), but sold it.

He said the com­pa­ny spent sev­er­al years af­ter ac­quir­ing the fran­chise do­ing "sub­stan­tial in­ves­ti­ga­tion" and re­search, train­ing its staff and pro­mot­ing the sys­tem to stake­hold­ers in the con­struc­tion sec­tor.

"We need­ed to un­der­stand what our plat­form was," Ba­boolal said. "It took us a few years to un­der­stand the sys­tem."

He said no few­er than 19 pre­fab sys­tems have been in­tro­duced to T&T in the last 30 years, most of which have "failed, prob­a­bly for want of un­der­stand­ing."

"We did not want this to be num­ber 20."

Mul­ti-pur­pose tech­nol­o­gy

Ba­boolal said the pan­els are de­signed for in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial us­es, ho­tels and the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

"A lot of it has to do with low-in­come and high-end hous­es."

The TIAH­CO ex­ec­u­tive said the com­pa­ny's fo­cus is not to build hous­es, but to get peo­ple in the Caribbean to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the tech­nol­o­gy, and so do­ing, demon­strate it can build.

"We take lo­cal peo­ple, train them and cer­ti­fy them," Ba­boolal said. "If you wish to go on your own and buy the hous­ing kit from us, no prob­lem."

Ba­boolal said if some­one has their own hous­ing plans, TIAH­CO's en­giner­ing de­part­ment can do a "re­trans­la­tion" and "pan­elise the house in­to a kit." Ba­boolal made it clear the com­pa­ny does not build what he de­scribed as "sweat box­es."

"The kit is like a jig­saw puz­zle. If the en­tire house is filled with steel, win­dows, doors, cut outs and first fix for all elec­tri­cals and plumb­ing, then box all that in a con­tain­er and our guys start erect­ing things.

"Then we use a process called shot­cret­ing ap­pli­ca­tion of a spe­cial mix of con­crete and 38 mi­nus grav­el and high pres­sure spray that mea­sure in­to the pan­els to form a con­crete skin. A day af­ter, you plas­ter as nor­mal or fin­ish that you re­quire," he ex­plained.

He said it took the com­pa­ny 18 days to build the Tu­na­puna head­quar­ters of the Land Set­tle­ment Agency last month for $179,000.

Even the four-storey, 80,000 square foot in­dus­tri­al build­ing TIAH­CO is housed in all Therml Im­pac: floor, walls, par­ti­tion.

Ba­boolal, for­mer chair­man of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, com­pared the cost of build­ing a home with con­ven­tion­al con­crete and bricks to that us­ing Therml Im­pac.

He said a typ­i­cal house of 1,000 square foot of liv­ing space costs be­tween $450 and $475 a square foot where­as TIAH­CO's units will cost be­tween $280 and $350 a square foot.

"Our foun­da­tion re­quire­ments are much lighter."

Re­turn­ing to the young cou­ples who vis­it him week­ly, he said the com­pa­ny can match the pock­ets of those who may have in­her­it­ed land from a rel­a­tive.

"We build starter homes. Our plans are ex­pand­able: a one or two bed­room, in un­der 14 days, for be­tween $280 and $300 a square foot. We try to get away from fin­ish­ings. We are builders and that is what we do," Ba­boolal said.

TIAH­CO, which con­struct­ed Farah's Court, 12 town­hous­es be­fore Kay Don­na at the in­ter­sec­tion of South­ern Main Road and the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way us­ing Therml Im­pac prod­ucts, is de­vel­op­ing 279 lots at Riv­er View Park in Ch­agua­nas.

Two months ago, the sod was turned for the new de­vel­op­ment Cen­tral Springs, a 57-acre par­cel de­vel­op­ment in Freeport.

"In Cen­tral Springs," Ba­boolal said, sit­ting be­hind his desk in his loft-styled of­fice, "there are 200 lots avail­able. In San Rafael, there are 200 lots. We can of­fer land at rea­son­able prices, de­pend­ing on the mar­ket val­ue and area and whether it is gat­ed or not." SC