After the X-mas holiday break the builders are back to work. On the to do list: walls.
Exciting as with the walls going up it wil become more visible how our home will look, how big or small it will feel and how the window views will work. So far so good but definitely a small home!
Also very exciting as the Formance SIP (structural insulated panels) walls are an important element in creating an energy efficient, well insulated, air-tight non-drafty, passive solar home.
The Formance panels are made of OSB and polystyrene foam precision cut to size in the factory and put together as a puzzle on site. There is another blog on why we chose Formance SIP panels (link) and the lay-out of the panels (link).
The insulation R value of our walls is 5.5 m2 K/W. We went for an R-value of 4.2 but had to increase the thickness of the walls slightly being in a very high wind zone and wanting to keep the full height panels as part of our design. Most Northlanders will probably choke on this R value stating “this is Northland” being used to homes being built to a highly insufficient building code of R1.9 but having lived in a supposedly insulated cold rental home pretty stoked to have a future comfortable warm healthy home.
Below the progress of putting up the walls within a week. Monday afternoon the first panels going up, coming back on Friday morning the panels are all in place.
(Thanks Formance for giving us a discount on our panels as we are blogging on our build)
Next up the roof panels.
Margriet