Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Structural Insulated Panels

Has anyone here ever used SIPs or know anyone who has?
Sounds like a pretty good way to build a house.

They're in service extensively where I work. I particularly like the firring strip feature on the inside, making a finished interior wall very easy to do if one chooses to. I believe you can spec window spaces and placements as well. If you want I'll get ahold of the contractor, so you can get his experience with it. If they're for a foundation, an insulated cellar or crawl space is certainly the way to go in these times, when energy to heat will almost surely get very expensive once again.

This looks very interesting too, but I don't know of anyone
around here who has used it.
Concrete fgrms made out of insulation
http://www.owenscorning.com/foldform/
Imagine as a contractor not stocking your own metal forms or a form truck, and having your forms delivered to the site for you. Not sure why they haven't caught on stronger yet. Change takes time I s'pose.

Some other cool things I saw at a home show last Winter - vinyl siding that is the spittin' image of cedar shakes, in colors. From 10 feet away, you can't tell the difference. Also - concrete and recycled glass countertops.

One of my buddies built a huge garage using those foam blocks filled with concrete. It was like a tomb. You still need to make sure you have some hardcore insulation in the ceiling to get the full effect. He went with 10' ceilings but I guess they can't pour all that at one time or the bottom blocks will blow out from the weight of the concrete above. They have to pour it in sections. Running the wiring was interesting. He melted or cut grooves in the foam and slotted in the Romex before drywalling. I would've done it like another friend: drywall then run conduit on top of the drywall for wiring.

The same friend then moved, and his new house had a regular stick-built garage with foam insulation that was sprayed in between the wall studs. That stuff reportedly works pretty good, too.

Insulated concrete forms are a great thing, they go together quickly and you don't have to strip them after the pour. They have a huge R-factor. Bucky has a good link up there. I don't understand why it hasn't caught on more either. If I ever build my own house, thats going to be the way I do my basement at a minimum. It can be finished with brick or siding or whatever outside, drywall inside. Door and window placement isn't difficult, but I would imagine it's a pain to try to change later

A leading supplier
http://www.superiorwalls.com/
Their new product is impressive
http://www.superiorwalls.com/products_xi.php
Note continuous layer of insulation. Very clever.

Food for thought for those of us without insulated cellars - ever notice the snow melted around a residential foundation?
An uninsulated basement up north here is kind of like perching a house on a huge concrete heat sink.

Cha ching! All's I need is a "I Love OPEC" flag.

I gotta git busy one of these days and insulate the interior cellar walls, which is kind of a pain to do to code.