Why isn't anyone using insulated panels?

[428PI]

If building a new shop or garage why isn't anyone using insulated panels? It looks far easier to put the roof and insulation on in one swoop than trying to spray foam or finish out interior for bat insulation. I would assume all commercial buildings these days are using them. Is cost way too high?

 

[jrsavoie]

I would assume cost is high. There was a time I would have seriously looked into it.

I worked on a few buildings that used them. Fast and strong installation. One of the guys that worked for the company took home a batch of rejects and did his whole house. Horizontal sidewall panels and all. It looked different but awesome.

Are you talking SIPs or insulated steel siding and roof panels?

I thought you were talking insulated siding and roof panels. Like these roof panels. The siding panels we used were smooth - no ribs.

https://westernsteel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/HR3-edit.jpg

 

[Stuart in MN]

People do use them, but they can cost more and it can be difficult to find contractors who are experienced with them. There have been a few examples posted here in the past. My neighbor built a garage with a second floor studio out of SIPs some years ago, it's a nice building.

 

[jack stand]

I'd say it was the (local) availability of the panels combined with unfamiliarity with a typical framing contractor. They are a highly specialized product and construction methods when compared to a hack of studs and a pile of osb.
Transportation costs along with limited pricing competition between the few suppliers add to the cost.
I'd like to see sips panels become something that you could pick up as readily as 2x materials.

 

[stillnostrebor]

IMP panels are expensive and long lead. We see a lot used on food process or higher end industrial, but usually for a specific reason. They would make an interesting shop if you had the cash.

SIP is getting to be more common, but still mostly commercial applications around here.

Both are on the high end of cost here compared to typical shop builds, even with spray insulation.

 

[Firebrick43]

Most I have seen on industrial buildings are screwed through the groove into the girt (which are 4' apart) and the next panel is just tounged in. Only a handful of screws per panel, and some are 20 some foot tall! No structural strength what so ever. So the frame has to be built stronger as the panels cant' share any of the load.

Seen several tornados hit them and they just explode as the outside of the building is depressurized. No thanks for me

 

[PugetDude]

They are widely used in Europe, but haven't really caught on here. Different design mentality, installer skillsets, and cost/benefit analysis.
I remember reading a few years ago that there were more IMP manufacturers in Spain alone than in the US.

 

[readhead]

I’ve done a few jobs with them If we are talking insulted metal panels. Very expensive. Details around openings can get tricky. They come in two styles, through screws, either from the outside or inside and blind screws with usually a t&g setup.
The biggest problem I see is replacing a damaged panel. Imagine a wall with twenty panels set left to right and #3 is damaged. You are removing seventeen panels to replace the damaged one and reinstalling them plus the windows and trim.
I did one job for an electric utility company supplying three buildings and they ordered eight of the longest panels to have on hand so if any got damaged they wouldn’t have to wait and worry about a color match. Those eight panels were over twenty grand.
I have to say that the finished product really looked great. The outside was very sleek and the inside was completely finished.

 

[MushCreek]

I considered steel SIPS when building my house. They are structural, and available up to 12" thick and 54' long. You send them the plans, and they deliver a pre-cut set of panels. I ultimately went ICF for a couple reasons. One was that I was one old guy, working alone, so I wouldn't have been able to handle the panels, and the contractor that did my excavation was an ICF expert, and helped talk me through it. I don't know what the cost difference, if any, would have been, but both systems cost more than conventional framing. ICF is stronger and quieter. To me, the ultimate would be ICF with SIP's on the roof, but I couldn't afford that.

One big factor is the difficulty of placing electrical wiring in the walls. There are ways, but many electricians aren't familiar with them. For a shop you could just use surface mounted conduit.

 

[jblnut]

We decided to do SIPs on the house we plan to be in forever. It was roughly a $15,000 upgrade over a "regular" house.


This is after day one with three guys. Laying out all the treated bottom plates took longer than it seemed like it should but


This is after day three with the same crew. It's going up quick.


We talked with a few people that had built SIP homes and they all had nothing but high praise for the product. "Heat it with a fart powered candle" is what one guy said

I'll post up some pictures of the walls when I get a chance. There are well marked electrical chases built right into them. Lots of them. My electrician has done a single SIP house and is excited to wire another one. He said the last one was super fast because all the chases needed were already there. First and second floor electrical goes into the floor system and back to the panel. Quick and easy he says. His "review" I guess is what ultimately pushed us into doing a SIP home. The HVAC contractor said they've done a bunch of them and can easily downsize everything by 25% and still have more than enough extra ooomph so to speak.

 

[428PI]

Aren't most commercial warehouse type buildings a form of metal insulated panels? I don't understand why the cost would be so much compared to having a metal roof, spray foam insulation and another layer of metal on the inside. I'd say just forget the osb style sip and go straight to metal. I don't know what gauge metal they're using though.

 

[billconner]

The insulated metal panels I've seen require a frame. The sips - word panels and foam - are structural.

I worked in a home office and window in front of me and watched an entire new house built of sips. Barely a piece of framing in the building envelope. Though in New England you see sips used a lot on timber frame houses.

Also, not sure painted steel is a siding of choice for many home buyers.

 

[Voi]

I looked into SIPs for our cabin.

I found the process of getting prices very frustrating.

What I found was that the fall off pieces were not being used for other parts of the project. So if they cross cut a 24' long piece at say 13' and they needed a 10' section elsewhere in the project the computer wasn't using the 11' fall off piece to cut that 10' section.

They said they had never noticed this before which I found very odd. Needless to say for a small cabin that cost really added up. Not sure I would have even noticed if it had been a full house.

We ended up stick building.

 

[firebirdparts]

Aren't most commercial warehouse type buildings a form of metal insulated panels?

You've posted that twice now. Personally I haven't ever seen a single one and said "why looky there, insulated metal panels". I'm not in the warehouse business though. I don't know.

 

[billconner]

Buildings I've worked on the design of have used the steel skin insulated panels but to save weight. Rest of building block walls with brick veneer, but metal panels used on a tall wall over a very long header. Much less weight than block and brick. Still had to have a lot of steel framing to hang them on.

I've also never seen them as thick as SIPs. They seem to be 2 or 3 inches at most. Could have changed. Around where I live now it's REP floors, R25 walls, and R49 or 60 ceiling/roof.

 

[Jagmandave]

The food manufacturing plant (temp controlled) I worked in was an iron framed building with metal panels, the roof panels were raised seam, 8 or 10" thick and you could walk on them, the side walls were plain ribbed sheet metal with a plastic cloth backed insulation in the warehouse, same in the manufacturing area with metal panels over that. The insulated metal panels were also used to build the storage and blast freezers, both walls and ceilings.....you could walk on those ceilings too but I don't know for sure how thick they were, might have been 10" too

 

[jrsavoie]

Buildings I've worked on the design of have used the steel skin insulated panels but to save weight. Rest of building block walls with brick veneer, but metal panels used on a tall wall over a very long header. Much less weight than block and brick. Still had to have a lot of steel framing to hang them on.

I've also never seen them as thick as SIPs. They seem to be 2 or 3 inches at most. Could have changed. Around where I live now it's REP floors, R25 walls, and R49 or 60 ceiling/roof.

I've seen the steel skinned panels up to 4" thick.

 

[nadogail]

Most buildings are erected by people who keep on doing what they have done in the past; it took years to put people and cargo on wheels rather than animals.

 

[kaymccampbell]

I made my own SIPs for the bay windows' reroofing job. Considering what they are made from, they made for amazingly strong panels. I made one that was almost 13' long, and it had almost zero flex when we lifted it into position. I tested it by walking along it like a bridge. They added great rigidity to the bay windows. No more flexing when you slam a door. There is a complete new skillset to learn for installation. I imagine it's the old dog, new tricks thing that keeps them from widespread use.

Now you can buy two metal sided, interlocking wall and roof panels for commercial structures. They build refrigerated buildings all the time, and those are totally prefab. There's at least two nearby companies that do them. Both make them for panelized homes as well as commercial uses. The cost is similar to stick built, but the insulated values are off the charts, and there's almost no scraps left on the jobsite. The skillset is similar to building Ikea furniture and steel studded walls. And you need a small crane.

 

[reader2580]

I got a quote for SIPs for my garage project before COVID. The cost was at least $10,000 more than stick framing. My garage project is going to be barebones due to finances so I am not planning insulation or interior wall coverings. The cost isn't quite so bad if you planned to insulate and cover the walls.

 

[billconner]

I wonder if the insulated metal panels are inherently cleanable makes them especially suitable for food handling buildings.

Shades of Lustron Homes.

 

[denis4x4]

My barn has some panels with T-111 on both sides and metal one side in the horse stalls. Went up in two days and it is now 27 years old with no issues.

 

[bradpac]

Aren't most commercial warehouse type buildings a form of metal insulated panels? I don't understand why the cost would be so much compared to having a metal roof, spray foam insulation and another layer of metal on the inside. I'd say just forget the osb style sip and go straight to metal. I don't know what gauge metal they're using though.

In my experience here in Texas and surrounding states, most large climate controlled buildings have a metal roof deck with rigid board polyiso panels on top of that and then the roof on top of that be it metal or TPO or whatever. It's not an all in one component, but site built. The walls can be done the same or spray foamed or you still see a lot of batts as well. Also, in wall systems you are seeing the foam skinned with aluminum more and more, but it's usually for that store fronts and accents or entrances. The return on investment just isn't there. The only place I have seen the actual prefab insulated panels is in a cold storage type facility. Basically R Panel outside skin, cured polyiso foam core and a steel or aluminum inner skin (usually embossed), a really nice setup, but really expensive I think 3x the traditional way runs. A buddy of mine looked at doing it for his 50x50 shop a few years ago, it was cheaper to spray foam and install liner panels....because that's just how we do it here.

 

[dcg9381]

If building a new shop or garage why isn't anyone using insulated panels? It looks far easier to put the roof and insulation on in one swoop than trying to spray foam or finish out interior for bat insulation. I would assume all commercial buildings these days are using them. Is cost way too high?

The industry sells these as "same cost" after considering labor, blah blah blah. I can tell you that this isn't remotely true in my area due to a lack of labor familiar with these panels. I'm particularly talking about SIP here.

When I did build, I used a type of panel (Huber Zip system).. But I stuck to the R3 type panel as most contractors are familiar with it and can treat it like standard construction. Even doing that, I had to have the Huber rep come out and we ended up correcting a some things. It'd probably be in the same ballpark to do their R-6 panels..

I specified Huber panels, but honestly you can get the same performance out of a combination panel with foam board and OSB, it's just not put together as well as Huber.

In terms of "easier" - spray foam is dead easy. I've never built a structure than couldn't be completed in one day (or much less). There is no easier system for a roof deck.

I think these problems are particular to areas where construction labor is generally "less expensive" (because there is a lot of it). I've never been able to make the move to a building system like SIP or ICF simply because the cost run up was soooo steep that the ROI wasn't there.

 

[PugetDude]

Continuous foam panel lines are just that- continuous; they need to stay running 24/7 to be economically feasible. Too much waste starting and stopping if you're trying to operate order by order, you lose the head and tail off the run. In Europe they run a lot of stock lengths to maximize efficiencies.
Limited demand for the product here means fewer manufacturers are willing to invest the $ to get into that segment. A double skin foam panel lines starts around $6 Million, a lot of that is in the foam system. In contrast, an entry level single skin panel line is under $200k- and will run 5x faster, takes up a quarter of the floor space, and doesn't require an industrial chemist to operate. The ROI is a lot quicker, even though margins are typically tighter.

 

[jrsavoie]

I made my own SIPs for the bay windows' reroofing job. Considering what they are made from, they made for amazingly strong panels. I made one that was almost 13' long, and it had almost zero flex when we lifted it into position. I tested it by walking along it like a bridge. They added great rigidity to the bay windows. No more flexing when you slam a door. There is a complete new skillset to learn for installation. I imagine it's the old dog, new tricks thing that keeps them from widespread use.

Now you can buy two metal sided, interlocking wall and roof panels for commercial structures. They build refrigerated buildings all the time, and those are totally prefab. There's at least two nearby companies that do them. Both make them for panelized homes as well as commercial uses. The cost is similar to stick built, but the insulated values are off the charts, and there's

Do you have names &/or links to the companies?

We will hopefully be rebuilding next spring. We started over a decade ago and have had nothing but illness, injuries and constant postponements since.

We have to do something so we can live comfortably or sell. My abilities have severely dwindled since we started

 

[Metallitubby]

We decided to do SIPs on the house we plan to be in forever.

I did the same and caught grief from friends and family about the costs up front versus "normal" builds. My HVAC costs are drastically lower in the heat of summer, and I fully expect the cost savings to extend into the fall and winter as well. We combined SIPS and spray foam in certain areas as well for sound insulation and it's crazy how quiet the inside of the house is.

 

[kaymccampbell]

Do you have names &/or links to the companies?

We will hopefully be rebuilding next spring. We started over a decade ago and have had nothing but illness, injuries and constant postponements since.

We have to do something so we can live comfortably or sell. My abilities have severely dwindled since we started

Not in a few years. You can just search for "https://www.google.com/search?q=ref...388j0j4&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8&hl=en"

Here's one that makes and ships different interlocking panels to order.

Insulated Metal Wall Panels 46 5/8" X 92" X 4"

Discover Coolstructures Insulated Metal Wall Panels, 46 5/8" x 92" x 4". Achieve energy efficiency, durability, and easy installation for industrial or residential projects. Elevate your construction today!

www.walkincooler.us

 

[gungatim]

LGR

 

[colt24]

A lot of warehouses are still concrete tilt up or precast concrete but you do see the big boxes with 30' and 40'ft + sidewalls using IMP panels. They will pour concrete "abuse" walls that are 3 -6' tall and then place the panels on top to prevent lift operators from pushing the walls out with the product being stored.
They are also building a lot of IMP panel buildings inside of warehouses . The panels are 4"+ and used to create a refrigerated area. They are commonly referred to as a " box in a box" .

 

[sjvicker]

The conversation here went towards SIP's but what does everyone think about something like ZIP's R-Sheathing?

ZIP System® Insulated R-Sheathing | Huber Engineered Woods

ZIP System® R-sheathing is the simple all-in-one structural panel with built-in exterior insulation with integrated moisture, air and thermal protection.

www.huberwood.com

 

[billconner]

I swear every house under construction around here uses zip system, and some seem happy to get it up and taped and wait a few years before siding. It is basically a substitute for sheathing. Allows use of standard 2x4 walks with batts and meet the R25 required around here. Probably more economical than sips for same nominal R value. Kind of expensive last I looked.

 

[428PI]

I didn't realize it until a few years ago but Great Bend, Ks has 18 of those homes. My local town Newton has at least 1. Interesting story with the Tucker car, etc. I'm talking about the Lustron homes mentioned earlier. I made a mistake when trying to quote the author.

 

[Copymutt]

Built a vacation timber frame with SIPs. Technically thats 2 structural envelopes. Extremely quiet. Need to bring in outside air for the wood stove. Near zero heating costs. Went up in a couple of days. Its all in the planning.

 

[manwithtools]

Hey Copymutt, what timber frame company did you use? We are going to build one in the next year or two in TN. Just curious on your experience.

 

[billconner]

I didn't realize it until a few years ago but Great Bend, Ks has 18 of those homes. My local town Newton has at least 1. Interesting story with the Tucker car, etc. I'm talking about the Lustron homes mentioned earlier. I made a mistake when trying to quote the author.

Like anything old and somewhat rare - just 2500 built - they become collectable. I suppose it might be a good move to buy Boxabl Casitas, but pretty sure they won't become rare in my lifetime.

 

[dcg9381]

The conversation here went towards SIP's but what does everyone think about something like ZIP's R-Sheathing?

ZIP System® Insulated R-Sheathing | Huber Engineered Woods

ZIP System® R-sheathing is the simple all-in-one structural panel with built-in exterior insulation with integrated moisture, air and thermal protection.

www.huberwood.com

I used them in my residence. They're fairly common in construction down here. A family member just did a garage/apt up north and used the 6" panel. They're pretty easy to install and most contractors can do them. If they don't have experience (

 

[dcg9381]

The conversation here went towards SIP's but what does everyone think about something like ZIP's R-Sheathing?

ZIP System® Insulated R-Sheathing | Huber Engineered Woods

ZIP System® R-sheathing is the simple all-in-one structural panel with built-in exterior insulation with integrated moisture, air and thermal protection.

www.huberwood.com

I used them in my residence. They're fairly common in construction down here. A family member just did a garage/apt up north and used the 6" panel. They're pretty easy to install and most contractors can do them. If they don't have experience (or if you're doing them and you don't) the common places that go wrong are:

1) Over driving the nails (there's an attachment you can get to limit this)
2) Using the wrong nails
3) The tape used with this stuff is pressure sensitive. It's spectacular tape, but it MUST be rolled on after putting it up initially.
4) Pay attention to how you do a correct outside corner with this stuff.

Technically, you can do the same thing with a foam board and OSB, for less cost, but more hassle, and inferior sealing between panels.

 

[billconner]

Foam board, OSB, and house wrap, right? Replaces all three?

 

[dcg9381]

Foam board, OSB, and house wrap, right? Replaces all three?

I believe that's correct as foam board and OSB does not provide a vapor barrier, while the zip system does. They're actually pretty specific about not over-driving nails (or taping over-driven nails).