House made of insulated panels is a first for building crew

Editor's note: Follow the Hammonds' progress with their new house by going to www.startribune.com/newhouse to visit their blog, and watching Homes for periodic updates.

By Jason Hammond, Special to the Star Tribune

Last update: October 5, 2007 - 2:59 PM

Editor's note: Follow the Hammonds' progress with their new house by going to www.startribune.com/newhouse to visit their blog, and watching Homes for periodic updates.

I took the day off from work to get a hands-on understanding of what goes into building a home with factory-built structural insulated panels (SIPs). I had spent summers in college doing various construction jobs, from pouring concrete walls to framing homes, but I had never worked with SIPs before.

The idea of an entire home built from foam insulation sandwiched between two pieces of oriented strand board (OSB) or plywood sounds crazy. Each panel comes in a 4-foot section and is tipped into place on the bottom sill and fastened with screws through the OSB into a plywood flange inserted into a groove in the insulation. The flange is adhered to both panels with sticky blue adhesive and spray foam to create an airtight connection between the foam in the two panels.

I helped spray foam and adhesive and then fasten the panels into place. For the most part, the panels go together well, but sometimes they need some minor adjusting using a circular saw, a reciprocating saw and a foam heating tool. Although this was the crew's first home constructed of SIPs, they quickly learned the key techniques from Curt Stendel of Panel Works Plus. The next day the crew set the floor trusses in the garage, framed up a few of the interior load-bearing walls and set the major beam to hang the remainder of the floor trusses.

I arrived just before it rained to snap a few photos of the day's work. The panels for the roof had been delivered and they dwarfed the building. Next, the steel trusses for our living room will arrive from Leum Engineering. Next week, the second floor will be sheeted, the walls will be set and, if we're lucky, the roof panels may even go up.

Jason Hammond is at hammond@mojosolo.com.

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