Last week I got up to Murwillumbah (Northern Rivers NSW, Australia) with my client (SipForm) from Perth Western Australia to see our new modular panel factory with all the brand new sparkly machinery pushing out it’s first home! This is a first step before robots will be engaged to do the manual movements around the factory autonomously.
While all this was happening, the first two homes of six were underway in a South Australian low-cost housing project. Monday started, and by Friday all walls and trusses were on one. It will be interesting to see these finished with architectural attachments. These homes took around 2 days of factory fabrication and were then delivered flat-packed.
Builders we met with while there from flood-affected Lismore were blown away by the speed of delivery, installation, and final finish, suggesting this system is surely the way of the future!
Other photos: glueing and pressing line, press, dust extraction, rebater, and panel saw.
That’s all SIPs based, as in structural SIPs? Here in New England, Ted Benson expanded his business from strictly timber framing into panelized prefabrication, but I think theirs have framing in them, not just structural SIPs, not that they aren’t used to SIPs from all their timber framing work.
Yes mate, Cementitious SIPS. The beauty of cementitious SIPS, the Fibre Cement sheeting is just finished inside and out, theres no need for building wrap, battens,cladding and lining!
We’ve obviously moved away from the term Structural Insulated Panel for market reasons and secondly, we’ve created an entire building system around. Printed bottom plates as just one example, just fit them, all anchor bolt locations, panel numbers and orientation are indicated.
There are now a lot of systems similar to the one you mentioned, Ted Benson’s system, where the entire wall is delivered. They are a little problematic in that their transport is tall and requires a crane, and return of support steels when transported, but the big one - the expansive comercial space needed to construct them. We’ve been working in just 300sqm.
I did my master thesis 15y ago on the Panel buildings made in the soviet union back starting in the 70’s. they were the housing of the future. they were planned for 30 years and are still standing after 55, and mostly needed insulating.
they were based on the panels designed by the french post WW2 to quickly rebuild housing. the housing of the future.
is pre-build panel housing the future of housing ? maybe. collective housing versus individual house ? sure is.
We can work with both predetermined designs or completely custom, low cost housing or an architectural masterpiece, the panel allows for any overclad material. The only difference being that the panelisation has to be done for one or many! In the factory, you just hit the start button.
Essentially, it’s just a base wall; that can be a total wall or just part of it!
yeah, I know, as I said, quite familiar with panel building, old ones, soviet ones, and more recent ones.
edit : off topic
however technique and materials alone are not enough, density and typology matters.
I’m an a panel-built building from the late 50’s, still standing, still fine, we’re about to redo the insulation (from the outside) and we’ll be fine for the next 50 years.
individual housing, especially using light materials, doesn’t have such a shelf life, and it involves a lot of infrastructure and high impact on the environment.
solutions like yours allow a faster on-site job, and in general a cleaner site / lower impact. most pre-fab solutions really.
that was my point.
is there a limit in size / volume of the building ? if you need to go high, does it require extra structural reinforcement ?
It’s definitely the way forward. I’ve seen a few one off houses built this way here in the UK and have always thought a new estate full of them would make sense for speed and cost.
There’d be loads of brickies on permanent smoko though!
The panels themselves take a point load of 20kN so we can easily do up to 3 stories. There is no limit on volume other than any compartmentisation to meet building requirements for fire.
Yes mate! 6mm faces and an EPS core, or alternatively one face of Weathertex. Weathertex is a BRILLIANT product, made of Australian Eucalyptus pulp from forestry refuse and a pinch of wax. I’m not sure if still the case, but for many years it was the only Platinum rated GreenTag product globally. Upto 3660x1200mm sheets in a range of profiles. Awesome for SIPS.
Structure; We use a 50x50x1.6mm SHS as the jointer between outer wall panels that is thermally broken from both faces and inner junctions are sline jointed.
In the 1950-1970s people dreamed of an “open” panel building system that had a few standardized components that could be “sold at a hardware store” and assembled like Lego. One of the inspirations was the Eames’s Case Study House. A self-build alternative was developed by Walter Segal in Britain.
Everything is glued and screwed, despite the overall redundant strength,
A level 5 finish (best) is achieved for wall finish, though we suggest a level 4 as this meets the standard,
We’re around 90% less than the maximum standard for condensation and air tightness, such that mechanical air exchange is required,
The system meets BAL 40 bushfire attack level, the second highest besides FZ flame zone,
The system is anchored via a direct path to the ground, and walls are impact resistent - so suitable for use in Cyclone prone areas,
The system is easily recovered after flooding, and
We’ve proven a 67% reduction in CO2 emissions over traditional Australian build methods, and a significant material efficiency (>90%).
Meaning I guess, that fast doesn’t mean we’ve missed anything.
The housing crisis we’re seeing in Australia is partly due to a significant trade shortage! Our moto is: Instead of upskilling building trades, we’ve downskilled the product!
Yeah, I think it’s been the dream of many for a long time! With Cemenititious SIPS, where they perform as a monolithic wall panel (skins become your cladding and lining), the detailing if done as per the industry normals is insane, and simply due to the number of rebate types required!!!
Below are the interfaces I’ve done for the rebater (edge grinding / profile cutting) and second, for the hotwire profiler that clean cuts large volume profiles, this allows for any clean EPS offcut to be returned to supplier for recycling into same product. There’s more than 90 different profiles x 2 thickness panels. But adopting all of these, makes the system solid for any custom designed home!
single family houses in Sweden are largely (something like +80%) built with panelized assemblies (and have been since the 1980s) but in Norway things are still stick built. It’s really a question of energy codes, building culture, etc.
This video from 1988 is from a US non profit touring a Swedish factory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2yoBNYAosY
