There is much talk about using skins other than OSB to reduce the risk of mold. Does anyone have actual experience with moldy OSB SIP skins ? Thanks, Dave

coddave;

Having built with SIPs in Louisiana and Florida my concern was not so much for mold, but the possibility of termites eating the skins, causing major structural failure

Thanks for your response Chris, I can definitely understand why OSB does not work in your environment. I was trying to find an advantage of any other skin over OSB skins with regards to mold. After reading the advances in OSB in the last few years, I have not been able to find evidence of moldy OSB skins.

Thanks again,

Dave

A former colleague told me about a building show he visited. One of the speakers was a mold expert who pointed to the SIPs on the way out of the seminar and explained that the OSB panels were the way to go to eliminate the void from traditional stick framing. And while there may be some issues when panels especially roof ones are not installed propery, mold issues would be a fluke and are definately hands down better then stick.

If you really want to do some research on SIPs and mold issues, look for some of the articles that were done on the Juneau black eye some years ago. It seems that there were a number of failures but 100% were due to improper installation. And given the opportunity to have their homes rebuilt, the residents chose to replace SIPs with SIPs. No mention was made that they were replaced with steel SIPs however. And talking with a friend in Juneau, it never really stops raining there.