Off form concrete finish - Sydney

I can't see any single advantage of monolith concrete house:

1) it is overly expensive and requires 7-9 months of just formwork;
2) it is hard to put the services in;
3) it still requires insulation and proper interior finishes;
4) all concrete houses are likely to have issues with poor moisture control inside the house as concrete is not very breathable material, most likely you would need to invest into expensive ventilation system;

If you still want to go with all-concrete house, then tilt up concrete is probably a much better and faster solution, as pre-cast panels often come with built-in insulation and service provisions.

Some more sustainable and much higher performing alternatives such as woodcrete panels can be even better alternatives and you can order them with sand cement 'concrete look' render or apply spray on concrete finish onsite.

2. Double brick will still require chasing for services, however, chasing in brick is easier than chasing in concrete.

3. For double brick set up rigid insulation can be placed into the cavity, for concrete monolith you would have to insulate separately either from the outside or from the inside (will require wall studs, etc. but in this case you can hide services in them too), unless you find a way to somehow fix it inside your formwork before the pour.

4. Bricks are generally more permeable than concrete.

You can't really put much of services into the cavity as services are generally deployed during rough-in stage, when both layers of bricks are already finshed and roofing is deployed.

You would need to have roof on before putting the services in and the load bearing layer is inner layer.

Hi Simeon - precast vs off-form finish on site pour, are we talking a small or a big price difference? I'm still trying to think about how to achieve a non-painted house using concrete, but within budget haha