3 things that we know about SIPs Panels
SIPs Panels are easier to construct than you think:
Building with SIPs compared to traditional timber frame and brick is a bit like comparing driving a manual and an automatic transmission car. Given the choice, we would all rather know how to do both just in case, but once you’ve tried automatic, you never feel the need to go back. It’s just so easy, especially when stuck in traffic, to relax and drive a simpler but more advanced technology, but don’t try to drive a SIPs panel by the way, it won’t end well.
To stretch this automotive SIPs analogy even further and beyond what might be sensible, traffic is also a good way to compare SIPs and traditional build when it comes to purchasing materials and allocating onsite trade teams. The flow of resources to a construction site needs to be regular and predictable, but it rarely is. Something happens with a supplier or someone has a sick day, or any number of calamities, and next thing you know you’ve got a traffic jam and the build is on hold.
The answer? Ditch the old methods and build with SIPs.
SIPs panel construction uses around 80% less timber than traditional timber frame and brick wall construction, and about a third less labour cost. With materials and trades so hard to find these days, it definitely worth ditching the old methods that may have served you well in the past, and trying something new. In no time at all, you never feel the need to go back.
SIPs are NOT summer houses:
Some people refer to all standalone wooden buildings in their garden as summer houses, and that’s fine. Just bear on mind that there are summer houses, and there are SIPs living spaces – there is a massive difference!
Summer houses are wooden cabin type structures, without proper insulation (if any insulation at all), and while they may be pleasant during the summer months, they are bitterly cold places to be for 6 months of the year. SIPs panel constructions are totally 100% for all year round use.
The exterior incorporates a couple of inches of insulation all the way around, floor, walls, ceiling, the lot, and not woolly loft insulation either, its a super dense rigid foam, that keeps the cold out and the warm in.
Not only are SIPs brilliant at keeping the warm in and cold out, the construction method itself is designed to reduce drafts and is overall 15x more air tight than traditional house constructions methods, and probably the same multiple again more air tight than wooden cabin summer houses. SIPs panel structures are comfortable places to be all year round.
SIPs Panels are NOT a new type of construction method:
Advanced doesn’t necessarily mean new, and while the ‘green’ credentials of SIPs construction are extraordinary, you’ll see that the method isn’t all that new. SIPs panel construction has been popular in Europe and USA for many decades, but us here in the UK have just been a bit slow to adopt it, but things are moving quite quickly now and SIPs panel construction will soon be the main construction method, especially for extensions.
Some 80 years ago, the SIPs construction method was developed by the US government-established Forest Products Laboratory, with one modest SIPs structure constructed in 1937 standing in Wisconsin until 1998, when it was eventually levelled to make way for a Pharmacy School. The point is that as a construction method, SIPs really is just as durable as more expensive and less advanced traditional alternatives.
The real advances with SIPs construction came when computer aided design (CAD) packages came along in the 90s, which meant a lot of the SIPs panel fabrication could be done in the factory, before the whole building shipped to site and erected in half the time it would take for a traditional build. And there’s a bonus thing about SIPs panel builds that you may not know either, with so much pre-fab done at the factory, so all those annoying off-cuts stay at the factory and aren’t littered across site where they’d need to be tidied up and disposed of!
Let’s summarise. SIPs are easier to construct, greener, warmer, cheaper, faster, last just as long as brick and concrete construction, and eventually when it’s time to knock the building down and build a school, the materials can be recycled (unlike bricks and concrete!).
Contact us today for a quote, to get some SIPs technical advice, or even just a chat about SIPs and how they can build with them.
