syustia

I recently built a garage 7.3 x 10 metres using 600 x 200 x200 hebel blocksm and a 280m2 house using 2700 x 600 x 75 "powerpanels" I laid the blocks ( much easier and faster than bricks ) and fixed the panels to the house myself saving a lot of labour costs, based on the quotes I was getting from bricks layers I saved well over $10k doing it this way. If you are paying someone to do the labour you probably won't save so much. other than cost saving there are many points in favour of using hebel including the manufacturing enviromental impact is lessened, fire rating is higher, good insulation qualities to mention the main ones.
When you get your plans drawn you need to find an architect experienced in designing around hebel, try to keep the windows as standard as possible which can get tricky as this will help keep costs down, custom window sizes add considerable cost.
Hebel was developed after ww2 and has a long history, I found it to be a great building product and would happily use it again bricks and motor do have a longer history but we need to look at alternatives and improvements to our current building methods.
Most builders I talked to wanted to stick to bricks purely because it was what they knew.
I used an acrylic render colour from http://shieldcoat.com.au/ I learned how to apply it myself and was pleased with both how easy it was to use as well as the end result, it comes with a good guaretee which is not effected by doing it yourself.