We are planning on building this coming spring. I'm designing for building with sips for all of the inherent values of sips, and for the time savings of construction it will provide. I'm trying to decide now if I should continue with my plan to erect sips myself (walls only for lack of crane)or to pay to have the whole sips shell (roof included) assembled. Has anyone taken this approach? Was it difficult to find a contractor to erect just the shell? Any ideas on the cost for labor? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

knightbuild,

Please tell us your location and what kind of SIPs you will be using.

Particularly with metal SIPs there are methods to do the roof without a crane.

knightbridge, I built the entire exterior including roof of me home using strand-board SIPS. I bought my shell in Indiana. I needed a crane because the panels were 8' wide and up to 26' in length. If I were to do it again, I would use metal SIPS, especially for the roof.(I put a metal skin over the roof SIPS so I think I wasted a few thousand dollars doing that. Read all this thread it is very informative, and the participants know their stuff. Better choose a manufacturer as close as possible to your site, freight adds up fast. A reputable manufacturer can help you too, and possibly recommend a crew to erect the shell. My home is 3,000 sf, and it took 6 days to erect including installing all doors, windows, house wrap, and felt on the roof. The crew charged me $10,500 plus a weeks lodging; I felt it was worth it. GL Dan

Thank you for the information so far. DAND, that is exactly what I was looking for as far as cost to construct the shell only. Bigsky Insulation is the closest SIPS supplier to my location (MT). They manufacture R-Control SIPS in Belgrade. I have been doing a lot of research on SIPS themselves, but now I need to start getting into the details of cost, supply, etc. I have not looked into metal SIPS. Looks like I have some more research to do! Thank you

I did the erection myself with The help of 2-4 friends all who had extensive construction experience. (I am a remodeler at best). It was an intense experience but totally do-able. My strong suit though- was STUDY and DETAIL.I would not recommend my approach unless you really are willing to be on site, pay attention and work extremely long hours yourself. None of my friends had any experience with SIPS so even though they knew much more than I about construction in general,they would have missed a ton of details and these were things that really matter. Also you need to have people you can trust to do it the way you ask even if you're not there to supervise. This is very important if you do not have an experienced SIP installer. One more thing, boom trucks are not super expensive and are usually fairly available to rent, so if you plan carefully, putting in your beams and placing the roof goes pretty fast as long as you or your guy can run the thing.

VB Thanks for the reply. You are right on track with what I have in mind for my build. The sweat equity, to me, is well worth the savings. We recently paid off our home, and I have no interest in aquiring that magnitutde of debt again. I have several friends in the construction business, and I have done a lot of building and remodeling, but I have not done a project as large and detailed as a new house. I have been reading and searching on the cost vs. benefit of a SIPS roof over trussed roof, but either way I will need a Gradall or boom truck. If you or anyone else has any advice or guidance on the roof issue, especially if you were considering SIPS or trusses, I would really appreciate some feedback. I'm really new to actually posting on forums like this, so if I should be starting a new topic or something please let me know. IS there any way to go back out of a topic and stay on the same page? It is annoying to have to start at page 1 of the sips forum everytime I read a topic and want to go back to page 60 or wherever. Thank you all again for the help!

I can't help with the computer navigation. But I will say that this site has information to almost all the questions you could possibly ask. I have been reading it for years, even back when it was a SIPS only forum. I thought about trusses and and ended up going all SIPS. The SIPS roof was easy to build (with a crane) and so far I love it. The vaulted look with beams is beautiful and I love the sound of the rain on the roof. But it has its down sides as well. It would have been nice to have a little attic storage for example. There are pros and cons with every decision made. My house is very tight and heats very evenly and well.