Excuse me madam, your SIPS is showing
Mar 12th, 2007 by vivienne
We went to the Bemidji Builders show this weekend which, as you can imagine was pretty small and there were no parking issues. Free coffee and LED keychains everywhere, the best things we got were a florescent light bulb and outlet insulators.
Most contractors there were using variations of concrete and foam wall system, which involves pouring the concrete in the cavity of foam blocks, with and without rebar for extra extra inner strength. Good defense in the hurricanes which we see so much of here in northern Minnesota. There was a lot of talk about energy efficiency from the guys, but they all admitted that they were only using the system in the basement. Why? When I probed on cost there was a lot of hopping around, well you could go higher… and they kept looking for my husband in the hopes that he looked like money and that they could wow him.
For me the main contenders were the Icynene and SIPS panels. Cost goes in the favor of Icynene while the time issue and structural possibilities- it seems to me- go in favor of SIPS panels. The guy I talked to said $4-$6.50 a square foot, which seems high, right up there with concrete systems. Am I wrong? I can’t tell if it’s a real price or a Bemidji price. We get extra special pricing here some times, traditionally blamed on the fact that “it has to come a long way.” This apparently even goes for all the wood products that come from right here out of our local forests.
One thing surprised me though was when -I looked around online -I found it being used on the ceiling, OSB fully visible between open rafters, with the joins and all. It’s a high end house by Neil Kelly which had just won a green building award in Oregon. Very nice it is too. So my thought was, is this really aesthetically pleasing when you see it up close, or is OSB the new marble?
2 Responses to “Excuse me madam, your SIPS is showing”
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My friends built two homes using the concrete and foam form method. It was very expensive, they did it on the whole home and not just the basement. There were a lot of things that they had to plan out very well, like windows and such, since it’s not as easy to change concrete. However, they have absolutely loved it, and they are really energy efficent.
They don’t have any of it exposed, so I don’t know what that would look like. Seems strange to me though.
The concrete and foam homes I saw at the builders show were all finished at the end of the day too. It was the SIPS construction, the one with OSB and foam in between which the Oregon builder left exposed in the finished house. The again, they also left the concrete block exposed, so they were following the old tenet “Truth to materials.”
Your friend must have had a good experience with the concrete system to do it twice. Do you happen to know why they made that choice outside? Or they live in a hurricane or tornado area?
The expense is an issue for me around $6 a sq foot and up, but the other thing that put me off was that the builders here hadn’t gone above basement with it, they were topping off in regular construction, which just seems pointless.