Goggs

Thanks for your comments. Spoke to Buildstore about a mortgage but because I am self employed and in my 60's, it was getting very complicated. Bridging loan seemed the way to go. However, I can see us having to sell up first. The plus point is that we can do a lot of the ground works and foundations our selves, SIPS house so goes up pretty quick.

We own our current house which is valued at 600k and we have a 100k mortgage. We plan to self build and have the land. Our budget is 450k. Our options as I see it are; sell the house and live on site in a residential "lodge" or rent a house nearby (rental market is not good in the area). The other option is to take a bridging loan for the 9 month build time and pay it off when we sell our current house. I want to be mortgage free at the end of the build. Has anybody got any experience of bridging loan agents/banks that they can share?

Sounds good. It is SIPS ECO that have quoted the thicker EPS panels. What was your experience with SIPSECO from a service delivery perspective?

Thanks and glad to be here. From what I gather PUR has a better thermal performance than EPS resulting in a thinner, lighter panel. I can imagine that PUR panels are more difficult to manufacture compared to EPS. As long as the thermal values are comparable, thicker panels are not a bad thing, just need to take into account transportation and handling.

Just sent out my architect drawings to 4 well known SIPS manufacturers for quotes. Its a 340m2 house, barn type structure. I have 2 quotes back, similar pricing but quoting very different panels. One has quoted 150mm thick panels for the walls and roof but they are polyurethane sandwich with a U of 0.024 w/m2 which seems incredibly low. The other is 194mm for the walls and 219mm for the roof but polystyrene sandwich with U of 0.18 w/m2 and 0.15 w/m2 respectively. The U value for the polyurethane SIP seems incredibly low and it is the thinner panel. Anybody got any experience of polyurethane vs polystyrene panels?