(Photo courtesy of Strata International)

Nasser Saebi, CEO and Founder of Strata International Group and a Master Engineer.

(Photo courtesy of Strata International)

A foam house is being built in the foothills of Tucson.

(Photo courtesy of Strata International)

The finished house, which is built of foam.

If you huff and you puff, can you blow a foam house down?

Turns out, you can build real houses out of foam and they won’t fall down.

I went out to see a real house built out of foam, and, guess what? It pretty much looked like a regular house! But, there’s no wood in it, no steel — not a nail in the place.

This particular house was built with technology patented by local company called Strata International Group. General contractor Jeremy Pollock with Residential Project Management showed me around.

The contractor says this has totally changed the way he looks at building.

So, how common is this kind of technology?

It’s still pretty uncommon. This house I saw was built with a specific kind of foam and concrete, which is patented by Strata International Group. They’ve built houses, complexes, and even a high rise or two with the nanotechnology that makes up this product.

I spoke with their founder as well — master engineer Nasser Saebi. He’s spent his career developing this technology.

And as he mentioned there, building houses with this kind of technology uses fewer resources than building with wood and steel. And that’s one of the factors to consider here, this approach is meant to be more sustainable.

It’s a form of green building? How long has this kind of technology been around?

I took those questions to someone with the U.S. Green Building Council. Paul Totten is a building enclosure expert with Building Enclosures WSP, and he’s on the U.S. Green Building Council’s Energy and Atmosphere Technical Advisory group.

So we might be seeing more and more houses made of foam here.