From Sticks and Stones to Systems: Larry Falls on Reinventing Affordable Housing with Moladi & the M

Quinton Comino: Hello, everyone. Today, I’m sitting down with Larry Falls with ACP, its Associated Construction Products. But Larry wants to talk about a different construction company called Moladi. They’re based out of Africa, and they have a proprietary sort of building system similar to ICF homes, but different where the forms don’t stay on after you pour the mix into the cell. So it’s a different way of building.

Quinton Comino: It’s more affordable, a lot quicker. It reduces the trades that are required, reduces the skill set required to put it all up. Just really interesting system. I haven’t heard about it before. So if you also haven’t heard about it, which you likely haven’t because they’re not in the US yet, they’re just getting started, you’re gonna learn a lot.

Quinton Comino: Encourage you to tune in. I love hearing innovative products, and I think with the Moladi building system, they’re onto something.

Larry Falls: Hi. I’m Larry Falls. And, about forty years ago, I started a business called Associated Construction Products. I started the business as an independent manufacturer’s rep agency, obviously, for products for the construction industry. And the reason I called it Associated was that anything and everything that went into construction, I wanted to be repping for it.

Larry Falls: And, again, about a year and a half after starting my rep business, I actually started installing the products. And, over the past—excuse me. You’re gonna ask something there? No. No.

Quinton Comino: No. I’m listening.

Larry Falls: So over the past forty years, we built the business up pretty strong. And, about ten years ago, I started a succession plan where one individual that started with me as a laborer ended up becoming a fifty-fifty partner with the business. And then, about five years ago, him and I started selling our stock to two individuals—his dad and his grandpa worked with me on my very first project. And the other one is, he came into the picture with my business partner as his stepson when he was only three years old.

Larry Falls: And now the two of them, they’re in their mid-thirties, and about three months ago, they bought out the rest of my stock in the business.

Quinton Comino: Wow.

Larry Falls: Yeah. So it’s really exciting how the succession plan came together and how they’ve grown the business. And, yeah, it’s pretty awesome. But, yeah, it’s all related mostly to site development, new site development with the retaining walls and underground storm vault systems, geosynthetic liners and pavers, and we started an outdoor living division for all these apartment complexes. We do a lot of that work right now. But, about—wow. Excuse me. I’m not kinda interrupting you there. Sorry.

Quinton Comino: No. Go ahead. I didn’t wanna interrupt you. Go ahead.

Larry Falls: So, about ten years ago, I was introduced to a new product. It wasn’t new—it was new to me. A product out of South Africa, a company called Moladi. That’s M-O-L-A-D-I.

Larry Falls: And Moladi manufactures a form system for casting homes. And it’s really awesome. When I first looked at it, I thought, no. That’s not a product for here in the US because of the way the whole system worked, the way I was looking at it. But about three years ago, maybe four years ago, I started taking a different look at it because of our housing market, the way that it’s been going.

Larry Falls: And this product is really designed to be an affordable product for manufacturing homes and multifamily and commercial. It’s a form system that you set up. It’s a reusable form system that you put in place. You fill the cells full of a modified mortar mix, which is a very high strength, very thermal efficient, fire resistant, earthquake resistant, fireproof—you name it. It’s got all the bases covered.

Larry Falls: And so that’s the product that I really—that’s the product I wanna talk about today along with some goals of what I have with it.

Quinton Comino: So you said you did—because what you were doing before was not housing necessarily. It was that site prep, the development, and probably mostly, like, commercial jobs, probably not too many residential, I would imagine. As far as single-family residences, ACP probably did more of maybe apartment complexes or commercial buildings or maybe even roadways. Would that be right?

Larry Falls: Yeah. We weren’t building. We weren’t constructing any homes or that. No. No. The stuff that we did was all related mostly to commercial, and DOT work for the geosynthetic liners, lake liners. Yep. The underground storm vault systems, retaining walls.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yes. Yep.

Larry Falls: There you go. But at one point, I had actually started a home-building division separate from ACP, and that was really starting to do pretty good until the market crashed back in 2007. That kind of ended that venture.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. So alright. That’s pretty unrelated to now with Moladi. That sounds like new construction, residential homes, single-family residences. And you said you had an interest because you saw how the housing market was going. Can you tell me a bit more about that? Why you had an interest and why now you’re shifting focus to something that’s not quite related to what you were doing before?

Larry Falls: Yes. Moladi is a system that—it’s a plastic form system, lightweight form system that directs the system with your rebar, of course, inside of your forms, your plumbing chases, your electrical chases, all inside your formwork. You fill your forms with this Moladi-modified mortar material, and that’s all your interior walls, exterior walls. You can do your ceilings with it.

Larry Falls: We actually have designed right now for two projects—one for a multifamily, three-story using the system, for 336 apartment affordable housing/workforce housing units. And another project that we have designed four-story with using the system. And it’s—yeah. 544 units on this side.

Quinton Comino: So alright. Tell me about that. How are you involved with that, and where are these projects at?

Larry Falls: The projects are here in Florida.

Quinton Comino: Okay.

Larry Falls: I don’t know if I wanna mention the county right now, but they are—

Quinton Comino: That’s okay. No. That’s fine.

Larry Falls: —here in Florida. And we will be the developer slash builder on it. And it’s—I said it’s designed to be affordable workforce housing. Smaller units. It’s all concrete, all where—you know, from the floor slab, all the interior walls, exterior walls, your ceiling slash floor for your next units.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. I wanna talk about how this is designed and how the system works. I’ve been looking on the website while you’ve been speaking. Oh, great. But first, I just wanna make sure—so the projects you’re doing here in Florida, is that ACP doing this?

Larry Falls: No. Okay. Different—this is a different company that I own or just in partnership with someone?

Larry Falls: I partnered with the owner of Moladi out of South Africa. Okay. We’re putting together to be fifty-fifty partners for Moladi Florida.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Okay. Great.

Larry Falls: Yes. And just the—excuse me. Go ahead.

Quinton Comino: I was gonna say, does Moladi operate in states, or are they just—this is their first foray into the US?

Larry Falls: This is their first entrance into the United States. Although California had recently designated about 50 acres of property for a project there, and he’s been talking with the military and several other ones. But the Moladi system is currently being used in 27 different countries to get manufacturing set up in a few locations for manufacturing the form system.

Larry Falls: You’ll probably see how the other light plastic system—it’s amazing. It is designed for empowering these different countries to be able to go in and build safe, secure housing using the local materials there.

Larry Falls: And what’s really awesome with this, Quinton, is that your interior walls—you don’t use any drywall on them. If you have to come in and set up any furring strips and additional insulation, we have an R-28 value on the exterior six-inch walls. And then they set all your interior walls. So when you set up your forms, you fill up your interior walls and exterior walls at the same time. All one monolithic pour.

Larry Falls: And when you strip your forms the next day and you do a nice rub-out finish on them—the projects, if you go through and look at the website, you’ll see inside some of the finished product. It looks like just drywall or a nice finished product. You rub to a nice finish, paint them, and you’re all done.

Quinton Comino: So when I see this, my first thing that came to mind was, oh, ICF. But with ICF, the insulated concrete forms, you keep those forms. The forms stay with it. Correct. You fill up cells with concrete. This is a similar idea except the forms come off.

Larry Falls: Correct. Correct. And the mixture that is used is what gives you your thermals to it. And so in your finished product, it’s a nice rubbed-out finish and away you go.

Larry Falls: What’s nice with this being in a complex—you’re not gonna have people poking holes through your walls.

Quinton Comino: No. This is great. I’m looking through photos of this as you’re talking—the gallery on Moladi’s website—and this looks good. It looks like drywall on the inside to me. I couldn’t tell any different.

Larry Falls: Correct. They must be doing a lot of these in Africa.

Larry Falls: They are. Yeah. They’ll go to a village and—it’s totally different there than it is here. When I visited Moladi there in South Africa a few months ago, you go around some of these villages that are just all the old tin shacks. Hundreds of them on a hillside.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Of course, now we have people living in tents on the streets. Which is a shame.

Larry Falls: But what—so my vision with this, Quinton, is twofold. One, I belong to an organization called Man Up and Go. They work within the foster care system. Their goal is to end fatherlessness throughout the States.

Larry Falls: And what’s amazing is that we have like 25% fatherlessness in homes. In other countries, they’re like three, four, 5%. Why are we so high? But in the foster care system, the young men and women age out at 18. And Man Up and Go has individuals that work with the young youth, the men, and they have a part that works with the fathers that are working to turn their lives around.

Larry Falls: We feel that with this Moladi system, if you look at how it’s designed and how it’s being used in other places now, we can go in and start training these young men on how to get involved in the construction industry—because the construction industry is an incredibly huge market that people don’t even think about. All the way from manufacturing materials, supplying materials, engineers, surveyors, all your contractors.

Larry Falls: Just such an opportunity. And we feel that we can start taking these young men and the fathers that are wanting to turn their lives around and use this system to go in and start building homes affordably—not just the multifamily stuff. They’re really starting to focus on single-family and maybe quadplexes and so forth.

Larry Falls: But it’s the Man Up team—we’re working with them to structure how we’re gonna work that with them. Man Up currently has locations here in the Tampa Bay area, just started a new location in Ohio, locations in Missouri and Uganda right now. But Man Up is wanting to have a chapter in as many cities and states as they can throughout the US.

Larry Falls: And it’s really—of what they have. If you get a chance to look that up, manupandgo.org—it’s so—by combining the two systems together, we feel like we can go in and open it up for other contractors in these different cities to be able to get involved with a Man Up chapter in their own areas and use the system and work with these people and the fathers that are wanting to turn their lives around.

Quinton Comino: Yeah.

Larry Falls: That’s my vision on it—to really grow this and make it happen. And if you look at Hennie Botes, the owner of Moladi who developed Moladi to begin with—his mission fits into the mission of what we’re trying to do here in the US. It’s a perfect fit.

Quinton Comino: That’s great. So you have this to him—so, hey, this is an opportunity to come to the US, to build here, to join up with what your mission is and Man Up and Go, and really produce something out of combining all of that.

Larry Falls: Correct. Correct.

Quinton Comino: That’s fantastic.

Larry Falls: No. I was gonna just say that our goal right now is to set up a manufacturing facility here in the Tampa Bay area for his system.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. That would be fantastic. So—do you have it worked out with Man Up and Go to bring in the labor force and train them, or is that, hey, we’ll get to that later—now let’s just get Moladi going in Florida?

Larry Falls: It’s both. We’re getting Moladi up and running, and we’ve been holding meetings myself with the management teams, discussing some ways to make it work and put it together, and they’re excited about it.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Oh, I bet. I bet they are super excited about it.

Larry Falls: So how hard—the mix, is that a proprietary mix from Moladi?

Larry Falls: The admixture is. Yes. But you use local sources of your sand, cement, aggregates.

Quinton Comino: Correct. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Larry Falls: So the only other product is the admixture that goes in to produce the material that goes into it.

Quinton Comino: So then getting Moladi started in the US is gonna look like producing—you’re getting a plant going for the forms and then getting a plant going for the mixture?

Larry Falls: I don’t know we need a plant for the mixture. It’s a very condensed material that you dilute—so if you took 25 gallons, you’d make up 100 gallons of the mix that goes into manufacturing your mortar.

Quinton Comino: That’s gonna come from overseas?

Larry Falls: That hasn’t been decided yet. Yes. Okay. Yes. Initially, eventually it makes sense. But it’s pretty compact with shipping.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yeah. Initially, eventually it makes sense. That’s really okay. That’s really exciting. That’s pretty ambitious to combine all of those things and jump into this—especially, look, you had a ten-year succession plan for ACP, and sounds like you executed on that pretty well. But instead of retiring, you’re like, actually, let’s start something totally different.

Larry Falls: Well, yeah, and I’ve been working on it for, like I said, about the past three or four years—all put together and figuring this whole out, how to make it work. And so it’s taking a little bit of time to come together. But right now, we’re in for getting the Miami-Dade high-velocity hurricane approval on the product.

Larry Falls: From testing that Moladi has from other countries, they passed all the different impact, thermal testing—and we have a US company on the mix and product, and it’s an R-28 thermal value to it.

Quinton Comino: Mhmm. Yeah.

Larry Falls: If you’re involved with masonry block and drywall, you put all of them together, you might get up to a five or six, and then you have to add your insulation on the wall and your furring strips and your drywall. Well, we don’t have all that.

Larry Falls: If you look at the amount of construction debris that comes out of a multifamily project being built or a home being built, it’s incredible. We accept order and fill the forms and swim. You already have your electric and plumbing chases in the walls. Then you go in and set up your HVAC system.

Larry Falls: So if you’re building a house and you’re gonna do conventional roof trusses, then you’re gonna have drywall on your ceiling for that. But on these multifamilies that we’ve got designed right now, it’s all concrete mix—concrete floors are a concrete mix because you use a larger aggregate in that. In the others, it’s a mortar.

Quinton Comino: That’s amazing. That is amazing. You said you’re trying—you’re working this out. How will you know when, hey, this is working—we did it?

Larry Falls: Well, it’s gonna work. But they’re already coming together now.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. I’m not—I’m sure. Well, what are you looking for to say, this is it—we set out to do.

Larry Falls: Well, the goal is really to—once we start the manufacturing here, we wanna open the doors for other contractors to be able to buy the form system from us and then to develop their own business with building on it. It’s not just us doing the building on it—it’s truly trying to set up a system to empower the younger people and be able to provide good affordable, sustainable buildings.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. So the aspect of it—when I—again, ICF was the first thing that came to mind when I saw those photos, right, with the forms and filling it. Makes you think of concrete. Concrete’s not cheap when compared to stick framing. It’s more expensive to do concrete. How does this proprietary mix with Moladi compare to stick framing? And where does it fall on affordability?

Larry Falls: Our preliminary numbers—we’re about 20% cheaper price-wise. But when you take into the factor of your whole HVAC system not being as large as what you need for conventional build, you add that price in. So your thermal efficiency of the building—you don’t have all your waste material that you have to haul off and dispose of. Your construction time is much faster than your conventional build. So a lot of advantages to it.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. And just a lot quicker, less trades have to be involved, more straightforward.

Larry Falls: Correct. Your labor rate is much cheaper.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Because it’s not as complicated. I could see that.

Quinton Comino: So we have what we’re doing a little bit of—something we call the Mod Pod. And I’m curious to hear your thought on this. Because, you know, by and large, as people all across the world—for the most part, with the exceptions of mud huts and what have you—we largely have been building the same way. With stick framing. That’s a pretty common way to build.

Quinton Comino: You cut down some trees, make some two-by-fours or whatever, and you make a house. Hasn’t changed a lot, and you do your MEPs and what have you. What we’re doing—what we’re trying—is something we call the Mod Pod, which is essentially like the heart of the home. It has all the MEPs inside of it. It has the bathrooms inside of it. It’s maybe a 10 foot by 20 foot pod. It has the two bathrooms inside, and it has the water heater and the furnace, and there’s a wall with all the plumbing, the electrical panel that’s been landed.

Quinton Comino: And on the opposite side of that wall, what you would do on-site is you’d put your kitchen there. So everything is in that pod. Have you thought of any sort of a design structure for single-family residences that emulates something similar to that? Does the way I explained it make sense?

Larry Falls: No. I understand what you’re saying. So you would have the heart of the home in it and then build the bedrooms and everything around that. Is that the way that I’m understanding?

Quinton Comino: Yes. Correct. And so all the MEPs are in there, which means everything else is just gonna be walls and some electrical wires for the rooms—for your lights and your plugs, which is not complicated stuff.

Larry Falls: Right. That’s an interesting idea. Of course, you see more and more modular units being erected currently throughout the US where you bring in these modular units on a truck and a big crane lifts them up and puts them in place, and away you go.

Larry Falls: With the Moladi system, you erect your plastic forms, fill them full of your mortar, strip the forms, put your rub finish on them, paint them. So no large equipment needed, no cranes, no transporting in big truckloads of materials however far you have to transport it.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. No. Great points that you put there. So this is—being that it’s only 10 by 20, you’re not gonna have to have a large crane. It’s gonna be actual modular home—that’s gonna be 14 by 56 each half or longer. You’re not gonna have many of them too much shorter than that. And so those ones are gonna have to have a big crane, get in there, all that stuff.

Quinton Comino: We’re trying to avoid that. And so you’ll need a small crane—which, like a—I don’t know how many pounds it is, but it’s not much. It’s not nearly what you’d have to have for such a large modular. And they’re simple to ship being only 10 feet wide. You don’t even need escorts for that. So in a lot of cases, you’re not even going to need an escort.

Quinton Comino: So then you reduce those costs, and you have all the MEPs there. And when you do the foundation, you just have a little spot for it to go—maybe a little crawl space spot or a little drop-down in the foundation, and it just boom, sets in there and really just inserts itself in there. And then you build the walls around it.

Quinton Comino: And you could combine this—see, here’s kinda what I’m getting at. You could combine this or this idea of this Mod Pod, the heart of the home, with Moladi because Moladi reduces a lot as we’ve already spoken—with the labor, with the cost, with the time. And then with the heart of the home being in this Mod Pod, you set that there, which also reduces your labor, reduces your cost, reduces your time. Then you do the Moladi system around it.

Quinton Comino: Have you thought of doing something like that? This is in the design of, hey, we wanna have affordability.

Larry Falls: You know, I think that we’ll have to be open-minded to new ideas and new ways of doing things. And certainly looking at the value of doing that with combining it in with the Moladi system certainly has a value to it. And so that’s something that I’d be interested in learning more about that with you and see how that could be put together and used.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yeah. I just—mind, it’s something that we’re trying because, again, the way that people have built has been the same way for hundreds and thousands of years and what have you. Not a lot of—there have innovations, I shouldn’t say there haven’t. But at the structure—the stone stones—it’s literally still sticks and stones. Wood framing, you nail everything in. Do your different trades come in.

Quinton Comino: So I think there is really an opportunity right now for a groundbreaking way to innovate in the construction industry that’s gonna change how people build.

Larry Falls: Yes. I like it. I think it’s—and that’s like looking at Moladi’s system on how that’s put together. Most people are like, oh, wait a minute—what, that’s not how we do it here. That was my first reaction ten or eleven years ago. When I really started getting involved about three or four years ago—when I really started looking different and realized how much sense it made to build this way and the advantages to it, I was like, well, I know I have some hurdles to get around.

Quinton Comino: Yes.

Larry Falls: Hennie one time told me, he said, besides being a manufacturer of the stuff, I’m an educator too. And I’m like, you are. Because, yes, I get it—just getting everybody on this because people build the way they build, and they’re like, I’m not gonna do any different. What are you talking about? But showing them the value is huge. And once the builder sees the value—there it is. Makes sense. Alright. Let’s do it.

Quinton Comino: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Getting everybody on this because people build the way they build, and they’re like, I’m not gonna do any different. What are you talking about? But showing them the value is huge. And once they see—once the builder sees the value, there it is. Makes sense. Alright. Let’s do it. So we’ve found that to be the case with the Mod Pod. Once we explain it, they go, oh, yeah. This makes sense. We wanna do this.

Larry Falls: Well, and I really—being this in with Man Up and Go and what their missions are, what they’re trying to achieve—these young men, when they age out of the foster care system at 18, there’s some programs that they can stay in a little bit longer. But where do all these people go? How do we end—via doing affordable housing, which by the way, workforce housing—the workers that are helping build these, they’re workforce. So you work with them to try to get them into good, safe, affordable homes.

Larry Falls: Along with—there’s over here in the area, Tampa General Hospital, they’ve got a big development they’re doing right now—I think it’s 160 units, I might be off on this number—that they’re planning to go in and build workforce housing for their workers. And that’s a problem—there’s that their workforce can’t even afford to live in the county where they’re working.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. That’s wild.

Larry Falls: We can go in and build workforce housing in these areas—affordable workforce housing. That’s our goal.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Larry, that’s a great—and there—I really appreciate you sharing the vision. I think there’s overlap between what you’re doing and involved with with Moladi and Man Up and Go. Totally support that. Absolutely. When you have fathers in the household, that just makes a difference in so many different ways.

Larry Falls: Yes.

Quinton Comino: I think that’s one of the biggest things that would need to change in our nation to really see things shift—when you have a loving father that’s really guiding kids on just how to be participants, active, beneficial participants of society, it makes a huge difference. And there’s overlap with what Moladi is doing and how you’re getting things going in Florida. So that’s—I support that. That’s fantastic what you’re doing.

Larry Falls: Well, that’s what we need to do.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yeah.

Larry Falls: Grow people.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yeah. He’s put you—you’re not just building houses. You’re building people up. You’re building families through that. Building a lot more than just houses.

Larry Falls: Correct. Yeah.

Quinton Comino: Well, great, Larry. Thank you so much. I’d love to follow up with you sometime in the future. It sounds like you’re getting things off the ground. What do you think as far as where you’ll be in a year?

Larry Falls: I think that we’ll be in the process of building some multi—multifamily units and single-family units, Florida as well as in other states. Georgia—State of Georgia. We have people up there that are waiting on us to get things started. They have projects that they wanna talk to us about. And out in California and LA, they’ve set aside 50 acres to go in.

Quinton Comino: They’re just waiting. They’re like, Larry, come on. Just call me when you’re ready.

Larry Falls: Yes. So and I encourage anybody that’s listening to this—really look at the opportunities that they could get involved in within their own areas with building some good, strong, sustainable homes that—and be empowering the young people in there to grow and learn and finding the avenues that they could get involved in the construction industry and other parts.

Quinton Comino: Absolutely. I agree. So thank you, Larry. Maybe a year from now we’ll check back in the states that you’re in and see.

Larry Falls: We’ll check-in then.

Quinton Comino: Yeah. Yeah. I’m here for it. Thank you so much for your time today.

Larry Falls: Okay. Great. Thanks for this. It was kinda different for me, but I enjoyed it. Yeah. Thank you.

Quinton Comino: Thank you, Larry. We’ll see you.