REAL ESTATE : Home Builder Busk, a Man of Steel, Goes Against Custom to Frame Debate

Custom builder Busk Homes of Monarch Beach is framing a large custom residence in the Ritz Cove community there for company owner David Busk.

The house is framed with light-gauge steel, and since Busk’s open house and wall-raising on Oct. 28, the phones have been ringing off the hook with calls from architects and other building industry professionals.

The wall-raising occurred under skies that were smoky from the fierce coastal wildfire that had started the day before in Laguna Canyon. The fire, which was still burning when Busk’s crews went to work on the wall framing, ravaged thousands of acres of hillside scrub, razed about 230 homes and damaged 70 more in Laguna Beach and Emerald Bay.

Steel melts, but it doesn’t burn, and the juxtaposition of the terrible losses in Laguna with the shining steel framework of Busk’s custom home several miles south caught the imagination of building professionals in dramatic fashion.

The builder says he likes lightweight steel because it is cost-competitive with wood and a lot sounder: It not only doesn’t burn, but it doesn’t warp, rot or shrink. It also isn’t susceptible to insect damage and has greater structural stability than wood in earthquakes and high winds.

Heavy-gauge steel has long been used in high-end custom homes, especially those that are cantilevered over canyons and sea coasts, but lightweight framing is fairly new.

It is even rarer in tract building than in the custom market. For one thing, wood had been much cheaper than steel until lumber prices began soaring last year. For another, so-called production housing builders are fairly conservative and tend to stick with the tried and true.

But a small number of tract homes have been built in Southern California in the past year with steel framing, and several Orange County builders have said they intend to give steel a test in upcoming projects--probably by building a few homes with steel frames and comparing speed and costs with those of conventional wood framing.

The renewed attention to fire safety that has grown out of the blazes that scorched the Southland in the past three weeks may give steel framing a quick boost out of the experimental category.

Busk certainly thinks so. He is hosting a media reception this weekend to show off the framing of his Ritz Cove home. In the invitation his publicist calls steel framing a “new building option that is destined to change the way we build houses.”