Recently I’ve received a few recommendations to check out an alternative to SIPs that uses light gauge steel to give insulated panels structural integrity rather than sheets of OSB. The most local company that provides such a product is the ThermaSteel Corporation located in Virginia.
Some of the touted advantages include the following:
- Using light gauge steel increases the % of post-consumer recycled content in the panels and can be recycled again if the building is torn down
- The design eliminates or greatly reduces thermal bridging
- The panels are lightweight and easy to assemble by hand
- The system can be very cost effective due to reduction in labor
- The panels form a vapor barrier and allow many types of traditional siding to be screwed directly to the exterior without needing an extra layer of house wrap or rain screen system
The main advantages over SIPs seem to be the vapor barrier feature as well as how light and easy to assembly the panels are. Also, if you were to go with light frame steel for the entire home, you would have very little waste and the entire home could be screwed together in a matter of days.
I called up the crew at ThermaSteel and they were kind enough to provide an estimate in a matter of hours. I was a bit disappointed at first but think that there is room to improve the pricing. The original estimate came back at about $25K for the 100K home and $28K for the corner home. The sales rep, Mike, and I talked through a few ways we might be able to knock a couple grand off the estimate by changing some of the windows as well as other minor changes. Since many of our window openings are over 40″ wide, they must include custom panels and reinforcing members to accommodate them. Also, a big 25% discount could be received if we wanted to commit to this building system long-term and become a distributor. The fee for this is $7,500 but we would get intensive training and would be licensed to sell to other builders in the area (not necessarily something we’re interested in).
Time will tell if this is a viable option for us this time around or in the future. We have a very important design meeting with our architect and builder tomorrow where we will review the full estimated construction budget and any final design changes needed to reach our goals. We will discuss SIPs, ThermaSteel and traditional stick framing with high-performance insulation at this meeting.
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I found this site from the Metroplois article. And I have to say very impressive. I am glad to see that you truly are exploring many options. As a student at Virginia Tech I had a little bit of interaction with Thermasteel panels, and they seem like a good option for building with SIPS. You can also get the tradidional SIPS with integrated structure, either solid sawn or engineered lumber. Those may be more comparable to the Thermasteel panels as you can probably get them designed to span the 18′. Also I would look into SIPS with xps or polyurethane insulations as they may act as an air and vapor barrier if properly installed. Also they would give you more R-value per inch and potentially decrease the panel thickness.
I know of two projects with these – one is blogged at the Austin Mod House: http://austinmodhouse.com/blog/
Another being built by a friend in Dallas. He had problems with dimensional tolerances. But if you can overcome the problems the system looks great.
I’m the friend in Dallas. These look like they have one advantage over the version we used with the “ship-lap” joints. For ours, you had to screw a piece of track to one side of each panel and then slide the next panel into it. We had structural steel about every 14′ around the perimeter of the house. The panel dimensions were so tight for the most part that in some cases the heads of the screws holding the track in place made the panels too tight. The builder had a guy jumping up and down on top of the panel (9′ off the ground) with others using crow bars to try to squeeze the panels into place. The sheetrockers are going to have a task dealing with all the bent steel. In other places, there was 1″ or more between the panels. However, with about 90% of the panels the wrong size, this was probably a quality control issue — these things can not easily be modified in the field. But talk about waste: We still have about 15 panels sitting on the site waiting to be taken to the dump. Also, with the structural steel posts, the chases became useless. The electrician didn’t want o buy the hot knife, so he dug out chases with a utility knife, what a mess. Oh, and about one out of every 15 panels would “spill its guts” when cut. That is, the EPS didn’t fuse in the center of the panel, so when you cut into it, gallons of little white beads would fall all over the floor.
Aside from this, there are all sorts of big gaps in the envelope. We are going to need about $2000 in spray foam insulation to fill them all in. Most of this is to handle gaps between the floors where the end of joists meet an outside wall.
All in all, it took over two months to get the structure up.
One last piece of advice, make sure your foundation is absolutely as level as you can make it. Even a 1/2″ rise or fall over 20′ will give you fits.
Wow. ThermaSteel is out…
Well, I should just be clear that our panels were made by a company other than Thermasteel. I can break down the total failure.
25% uneven foundation
25% panels sized with too tight tolerances
25% panels the wrong size (not fabricated according to the plans — or shop drawings)
20% plumbers and electricians have to cut out lots of foam to do rough-in (admittedly, we don’t have a lot of inside walls).
5% need for extra spray in foam to fill gaps (structure between floors).
Only 25% of this is inherent to SIP design.
If I could do it again, I’d definitely use steel stick-built with spray foam insullation.
Understood and thanks for the feedback. I’m sure ThermaSteel is a great company as they have been building for decades with their product. This is just too unfamiliar for this project to take a risk on. SIPs is already a hard sell and that is at least using wood panels and dimensional lumber that framers are familiar with. Also, we would have a lot of work to do to get the pricing down to the level that our SIP quotes are already at. The price just doesn’t compare and we have too many other places to cut costs without trying to get ThermaSteel down another 40%…
Just make sure your builder (and his subs) are on board. Both the plumber and electrician were cool with the SIP concept, but once they started working, they were cursing it. This added to the delays we have had. The much touted chases are not as easy to work with as you would hope, and if you use the type that have conduit run to every opening, you can be sure that once this thing starts going up, you’ll wish you could move a few openings or add a few and these changes won’t be easy (if possible at all). It is amazing to me that even after all the planning, once the walls go up, you see things that you never saw in Sketchup!
Hi,
Her is a pretty detailed description and pictures of one persons positive experience building a ThermalSteel SIP home:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SolarHomes/sipandicfhouse.htm
Gary
Gary – Good link, thanks. I think with the rise of price in steel, these types of panels are no longer cost competitive with the more affordable OSB SIP options out there. I am going to keep my eye on this type of system though as I like how you can design all of the framing in the house to be delivered to the exact dims needed and you can just screw it together. The light weight of the steel SIPs is also an advantage in the city where it can be difficult to get a crane or lift in as well as expensive.
besides thermasteel does any one know of any other light steel sip manufacturers that i may consider for my project
thanks
I like Kama’s product. They make a true thermal break between the inside and outside steel frame.
http://www.kama-eebs.com/
This technology is promising and probably worth us looking into for the future. The pricing was just too far off at twice that of SIPs for this go around.
The Kama price was very reasonable to me. Even with shipping now that they make panels on the East Coast and West Coast.
Are you from Kama Fred? Your link goes to their site.
No. I put in their site. I live in Texas.
GreenSteel has recently been through a 26-month automation design that makes structural steel and EPS wall panels a much quicker and more exacting manufacturing process. Look to see more from GreenSteel as their marketing programs “ramp up.”
I saw where there were some posts about ThermaSteel. My husband and i built a house last year using TS. To be honest, it was the best move we could have made after all of our research of other panels. Everything was shipped out as noted and our builder had our house up in half the time that it would have taken with wood. Our builder hasnt used anything like it before, but he said that he wish he could build using ThermaSteel panels then using wood. A friend of my husband is using it to construct their house. It is a great insulated product with a constant thermal break. Since we used the panels we were able to downsize our HVAC unit. I highly recommend it…thats just my 2 cents worth!
3 story steel sip video and pics
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&channelID=468602158
We found Thermasteel panels and adjunct necessary materials very expensive, labor intensive and difficult to work with in general. Subcontractors were frustrated etc. The manufacturer would not help us when we contacted them and really needed their assistance.