Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS) are the Answer!

What are SIPS?

Structural insulated panels (SIPs) are a high-performance building system for residential and light commercial construction. The panels consist of an insulating foam core sandwiched between two structural facings, typically oriented strand board (OSB).  SIPs are manufactured under factory controlled conditions and can be fabricated to fit nearly any building design. The result is a building system that is extremely strong, energy-efficient and cost-effective.

Exceptional Thermal Performance

Once installed, SIP panels deliver unrivaled insulation and airtightness, which reduces energy costs over the building’s lifetime. SIPs are known to be about 50% more energy-efficient than traditional timber framing. A SIP building envelope has minimal thermal bridging and delivers excellent airtightness, which lends itself ideally to LEED and net-zero-ready building standards.

R Value

Insulation is one of the key components of any energy-efficient home or commercial building.  With heating and cooling accounting for 50 percent of energy use in the average home, good insulation saves thousands of dollars in utility bills over the life of a home.

Insulation is rated by R-value, which measures a material’s thermal resistance.  An insulating material with a higher R-value forms a more effective thermal barrier between the outside temperature and the conditioned space inside the home. Research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy confirms that SIP walls provide more R-value than same-sized stud walls.

But R-value doesn’t tell the whole story.  Laboratory tests that determine R-value have little resemblance to how insulation actually performs in a home.  When considering real world factors such as thermal bridging and imperfect spray foam and fiberglass installation, the insulation for a stick frame house can lose more than half its R-value.  Research has repeatedly shown that SIPs provide continuous insulation that will maintain its stated R-value for the life of the home and outperform fiberglass insulation every time.

Healthier Indoor Air Quality

A SIP home or commercial building allows better control over indoor air quality because the airtight building envelope limits incoming air to controlled ventilation which filters out contaminants and allergens. The SIP envelope doesn’t have the voids or thermal bridging of conventional stick framing that can cause condensation leading to potentially hazardous mold, mildew or rot.

Sustainability Credentials

SIPs are highly energy-efficient and therefore contribute positively to the environment by reducing CO2 levels.  They also use significantly less energy during the manufacturing process compared to traditional construction methods and have lower embodied energy than traditional construction materials, such as steel, concrete and masonry.

Structural insulated panels are one of the most environmentally responsible building systems available. A SIP building envelope provides continuous insulation, is extremely airtight, allows for better control over indoor air quality, reduces construction waste, and helps save natural resources. Life cycle analysis has shown that SIP homes have a tremendous positive environmental impact by reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions throughout the home’s life cycle. 

Structural insulated panels (SIPs) are one of the most airtight and well-insulated building systems available, allowing for better control over indoor environmental conditions. Reduced energy consumption for heating and cooling throughout building life is SIPs’ most substantial contribution to preserving the environment.

• SIP structural OSB facings are manufactured from fast-growing, renewable wood resources
• Production of the EPS panel core uses 24% less energy than fiberglass insulation of equivalent R-value
• SIPs leave less waste on the construction jobsite
• Year after year, SIP homes consume less energy than comparable stick frame homes

SIPS Save Energy

Building with SIPs creates a superior building envelope with high thermal resistance and minimal air infiltration. Oak Ridge National Laboratory research on whole-wall R-value shows that a 4-inch SIP wall rated at R-14 outperforms a 2 × 6 stick framed wall with R-19 fiberglass insulation.

• ORNL blower door tests reveal that a SIP test room is 15 times more airtight than its stick framed counterpart with fiberglass insulation.
• Up to 40% of a home’s heat loss is due to air leakage.
• SIP buildings can have amazingly low blower door test results when properly sealed. Due to the reliability of SIP performance, ENERGY STAR opted to eliminate the blower door test requirement for SIP homes to meet ENERGY STAR standards.

SIPS Save Resources

SIPs Save Resources

The major components of SIPs, foam and oriented strand board (OSB), take less energy and raw materials to produce than other structural building systems. SIPs are also fabricated in a controlled environment, allowing for greater efficiency than site-built framing. The NAHB estimates that the construction of a 2000 sq. ft. home produces 7,000 lbs. of waste. SIPs have the ability to drastically reduce the waste generated during construction by using advanced optimization software and automated fabrication technology to ensure the most efficient use of material.

• OSB is manufactured from fast-growing, underutilized, and often less expensive wood species grown in carefully managed forests. The OSB production process uses small wood chips and highly automated machinery, making OSB a very efficient use of raw materials.
• About 85-90 percent of a log can be used to make high quality structural panels, and the remainder – bark, saw trim and sawdust – can be converted into energy, pulp chips or bark dust.
• EPS is a lightweight insulation composed mostly of air. Only 2% of EPS is plastic. Over the lifetime of a house, the EPS insulation used in SIPs will save many times the energy embodied in the petroleum used to make EPS (see Life Cycle Analysis for more info).
• It takes 24% less energy to produce EPS than fiberglass insulation of equivalent R-value.
• Scrap EPS generated during the manufacturing process can be recycled into new EPS products.

Faster Contruction and Less Labor

SIP walls and roofs are designed and precisely manufactured offsite. This allows the building to be assembled onsite quickly and made watertight in a matter of days. This reduces costs such as project management, scaffolding, framing labor and much more. A BASF time-motion study confirmed that SIP panels reduce jobsite labor needs by 55%.

Creative Design

SIPs can be engineered and fabricated to suit any building design, allowing architects and owners the flexibility and creative freedom to develop aesthetically pleasing spaces.

If this information has got you thinking about using SIPS for your new build, addition or casita, then please do not hesitate to reach out. We will answer any questions and schedule a time to stop by your place to access the site and gather the information we will need to give you an estimate.

NextDoor

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