Eh? Sips? What's that then?

[curlewhouse]

This is more of a comment than a question. For all that the principle of sips has been around since the 1930s, we have found a staggering level of ignorance about them from people who youwould expect better from. At first, just finding builders who were interested in doing the stonework proved problematic as some shied away or I had to explain what sips are to them, even though it's really just like doing it around timber frame. Needless to say we went no further with those ones. Then we found that even our building inspector knew nothing about them & was/is *highly* suspicious of them, querying even their approval status & forcing us to do research for him quite literally every step of the way as well as adding some silly restrictions demonsrating a complete lack of understanding of the system (at least one of which would cause quite a loss of heat if we went along with it). The most recent person has been a window company "surveyor" who has also been very reticent to deal with the build, with some weird ideas  (I thus spoke to this big national window company's *senior* "surveyor" about the delays this has caused & had to actually also explain to *him* too what sips are!) At its basic it is simply a much improved form of timber frame of course, but it has been an eye opener at how narrowly educated such a wide variety of the trades are & how nervous at the thought of anything "new". Our builders have just got stuck in, it has to be said, but if I were doing this again, or was advising someone just about to,  I'd say to definitely double check that your  building inspector had dealt with sips before, ditto any other trades who would be coming on site to interact with the structure - not because there is any issue whatsoever with sips, (in truth a lot of things are actually  far simpler with it),  but because of how poorly educated the trades from BCOs onwards seem to be about anything beyond brick & block & how nervous they are about anything  different & the delays this can cause due to imaginary issues they may develop.

Edited December 15, 2017 by curlewhouse

[Dreadnaught]

A very interesting insight. Good to know. I have not started my build yet but I am a convert to the simplicity and speed of SIPs. I will be looking out for this issue.

 

Am reading your blog and finding that to be very informative too.