I saw a new, and in my opinion, fairly revolutionary wall and roof system at the NH Home show last weekend. It's called the "Climate Block" system. Essentially, it's a SIP with interior structural members. There are engineered lumber studs inserted into vertical grooves cut into EPS panels. Zip sheathing is attached to these EL studs. The inside has 1x3 strapping inserted into vertical grooves, which are then screwed to the EL studs. There are also some 90 degree EPS corner blocks which make up the system. The inside surface of the wall system is unfinished, and has horizontal wire chases. The representative said that the floor system would be hung off a structural ledger. This would provide a wall system with a complete thermal break, like a SIP, but also provides considerably more structural strength. The representative said that pricing was about 5% more than SIP panels. The roof system is equally interesting - complete thermal break, but containing a 3/4 air channel for a cold roof. http://deltahllc.com/Climate-Block.html http://deltahllc.com/Home___Page_YRIV.html Some better pictures in links here: http://twitter.com/DeltaHPanels

Hi,

It would have to go some to be stronger than a regular SIP building. I just completed erecting a 24x48 SIP building in SE Arizona, and it was really sturdy once we had the roof on.

We used surplus stryene panels for the walls and custom urethane panels for the roof, and the roof went up in under 6 hours. We spent a couple of weeks on the walls, because we had to trim the surplus panels to our design. They were really strong! I'll know more about other considerations, like moisture and insulation after a while. The roof is rated at R-41, tho, so I'm optimistic.

JR