Hi everyone, I wrote a rather lengthy account of my experience of building a sip house in the radiant heating forum. I put in radiant so i posted there.. If you would like to read my mini book, its over there......
....Jim ......In madison Wis...

Hey Jim:

Thanks...but I guess I am getting older I can't find "There" please post link/location or title...

Thanks!

RE
"Hi everyone, I wrote a rather lengthy account of my experience of building a sip house in the radiant heating forum. I put in radiant so i posted there.. If you would like to read my mini book, its over there......
....Jim ......In madison Wis..."

John in the OC
...I don't know how to post a link to the radiant heating section. for my post. Heck I'm lucky I can post a reply....lol....
    Jim...in Wis...

My experience was that my 2 story 3000 ft sq walkout went up with 6 days of sip installation. The attached 3 bay 1000ftsq garage took another day and a half of sip work by an inexperience builder (me) and a framing friend of mine. And we both had no experience with sips so it was a learning curve. He said it was the straightest walls he had ever built. After the first day we flew along. On the night of the 1st day we only had one wall up on the 1st floor as we were learning. The wind started to come up and we were getting nervous as this was a walkout so on the backside we were 10 feet in the air and the sides were not backfilled to grade. The wind was really whipping before we were able to get supports up and my framing friend called me over to look down the wall when we only had a cross support at the front and back. The wall wasn't even affected by the wind!!!. We put a few more supports on and left for the night. I was very nervous that night as the wind came up to a windstorm that we only get a few times a year here. I thought I might come back the next day to find the wall on the ground. When I got out there the next day, the wind was dead and the wall was still up.

Some problems we had... My house was the 2nd the sip plant put out and they didn't take into consideration the 7/16" osb off of the plans for two cantilevers I had off of the front upper floor of the house in two bedrooms where the wall continues into the bedrooms with an open area to the main floor between the two bedrooms. Because I had to frame the bedroom walls to follow the the beams perpendicular to the cantilevers, the wall is 7/16" thinner where it meets the osb'd cantilever. I have this problem on the dining room below one of the bedrooms too as the cantilever is on the lower floor on the main floor also. What I will have to do is furr our the inside of the wall with 7/16" osb. Not a big deal, but I forgot to mention this to the electrician so I will have to move the boxes out to make up for the furring.

I was quite surprised that the windows were dead on where they were supposed to be. My framer marked out the centers of the windows on the floor on each wall and made sure when we put the panels together, because we had a bit of play with the splines, that the center of the window in the sip lined up with the mark on the floor (using a level). A buddy of mine who put up the 1st house this sip plant put out, just put them together tight on a looooong bungalow and found himself 6"short at the end of his 1st wall up and his windows and back and patio doors did not line up perfectly with his plan.

One of the windows we screwed up on it in the laundry room on the main floor, it just catches the end of the dryer. Because we picked out a GE set of front loads they are higher than standard appliances, the window catches the counter top over the W&D by about 3 inches. Because the counter is L shaped and will drop to normal counter height 3 inches over, I have to adjust the window opening. I think I will cut the osb out on the side about 6" to allow for the casing too and then just frame in the oops area on the other side of the window with 2x6.

One other problem was that the sip guys forgot to tell me that the sips are 7/16" wider than a standard wall and I ordered $35,000 of windows and doors for a standard wall. The window guys said for a couple of hundred dollars they could have made me a bigger jam. *sigh* This sip guys did give me a $500 credit toward the cost of furring out the jambs.

Another problem was that they cut the walls 1/4" taller than my standard 9' interior wall studs on the main floor (upper has 8' walls and they were ok). Not a big deal but I had to shim under all the joists with 1/4" plywood.

A had about a foot of leeway with the height of my garage walls. The sip guys said it would be quite a bit cheaper to go with an 8' high panel. They could also make the walls longer saving in jointing the panel labor. I said ok to the 8' panels, but once they got there and I made some measurement from my grade beam, I thought my garage was rather low. I decided to nail a treated 2x6 to the grade beam ladder in addition to the standard sip wood to give me another 1-1/2" inches. Whew, I'm glad I did that because the garage door installer told me that if I did not do that he would not have had room for the garage door openers.

If I were to build another sip walkout I would just stick frame the walkout wall. Adjusting the sip panels with all the the beams and triples is not worth the effort or the savings in R value as most of the wall is window, french doors and a single door.

I'm finishing up the electrical box cutouts and fishing the wire in the sip walls right now and one odd thing is that I notice that I can hear the neighbor across the streets constantly barking dogs as if I were outside. I hope the noise cuts down after the drywall goes up. (???)

I thought the electrical would be harder as I do not have any wire chases in my styrofoam. It is actually not to hard to fish the wire up to the box. The neat thing is that you can put an electrical box where ever you want without having to nail scabs to studs or have a stud in the way of where you want a box.

I want to put an icemaker outlet box behind my fridge and a potfiller above my cooktop, both which are on exterior walls. I hope I can get this past the inspector. They want a false wall installed over any exterior wall here if plumbing is to go into it. I am hoping I can talk him into letting me put the pipe right up against the interior osb and then put a metal protecting plate over it seeing as I have the extra r value over a 6" fiberglass wall. My parents have a house built with 2x4 exterior walls with a kitchen sink and a bathroom sink with plumbing in the exterior walls (since 1970) and have had no pipe freezing problems, so I am not concerned with pipe freezing (esp) since I am using pex.

Well that is all that comes to mind right now.... Any other experience tha can help others out with forsight. The sip panels are a great way for a do it yourselfer to build his own house.