The simple questions are always the hardest to fully answer.

Why SIPs – indeed?

Don’t we know the answer?

Well, I know the answers commonly given.  A quick search of the manufacturer’s literature gives the standard list of reasons:

• To provide unmatched comfort in our buildings.
• To make our buildings two to three times stronger than stick-built structures.
• To cut construction time – which is worth money.
• To shift field labor to factory labor which cuts costs.
• To shift construction to a controlled environment which enables higher quality.
• To aid in the tighter scheduling of the whole job.
• To provide a structure that discourages the growth of mold and mildew.
• To provide a building with superior acoustic isolation from it’s environment.
• To build with materials that have a smaller environmental footprint.
• To build with materials that may be recycled.
• To lower our heating and cooling bills.
  
  

I have to say that while all these are true and pretty good reasons for building with SIPs, the most important reason for me is to minimize the greenhouse gas contribution of our building to the atmosphere.

Last year’s devastating hurricanes and flooding in the Gulf Region created an overwhelming need for housing for all those whose homes were destroyed. Eyewitnesses still report that it appears as if the damage was done only just yesterday. The clean-up and re-building job is so huge that all the work done to date seems to be almost insignificant. Recently, in order to help, I have been working on some designs for all types of residential units in all parts of a vast region.  

SIPs have a great deal to offer in this resurrection effort.  ............

Direct-gain floor slabs have long proven to be effective solutions to passive 
solar, low-cost building programs. Remaining problems are:
a.)  the necessity to incorporate additional thermal storage to limit swings, and b.) integration of auxiliary heating systems into the building with minimal redundant construction.


Plenum floors, in use here since WWII, have gained acceptance as highly economical systems for thoroughly integrating the storage and distribution requirements of passive design. My first plenum floor residence (1975) used industrial roof decking to form the "mini -ducts" for air distribution and other similar residences have followed. The charging of the slab from below as well as from above increases the storage efficiency of the masonry slab allowing reduction in the amount of additional storage usually necessary in such buildings Twenty-one such systems have been completed, and additional projects are under construction'. The lay-outs have ranged from the simplest rectangular forms to complex angled schemes with elevational transitions, proving the system to be most adaptable.


Construction details and performance results are discussed. Costs are compared in a general fashion to other plenum floors and conventional systems.  .....

To my way of thinking building a structure with SIPs and not integrating passive solar technologies is like having a car, never turning on the engine, and pushing it around to wherever you have to go.  I am well aware that building design preferences – especially home design preferences – are fraught with imbedded psychological drivers and demons that have painfully little to do with the world of the rational.  At the same time, their owners will go on for hours about all the features that the building does have, and therefore how smart they were to think of them and include them.  Their building obviously has such value that it speaks volumes about their good taste and brilliance.  Most of these features that building owners brag about are strictly cosmetic and have very little to do with the idea that the building might actually perform for them; keep them warm or cool appropriately with minimum energy expenditure, or minimize the time and money required for their maintenance and longevity.  But such reality benchmarks are pushed aside by the rationalizations of the building owner who only has a mind for some kind of fantasy that projects who he might be or thinks himself to be.

All of the above to say that buildings should....

It was Samuel Johnson who said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”  These times have called this phrase up from history with respect to our response to all the events leading up to and around 9/11.  Those who have always loudly proclaimed their patriotism and those who are newly-minted patriots are especially cranked up at this time of the year, July 4th.  Since this is issued around that date, I thought it would be appropriate to spout off a little myself.  I guess most who read these articles neither expect or want any politics thrown in, but one can’t always have what one wants.

I feel that the most patriotic acts are those that build on the strengths of our country rather than those that call attention to our weaknesses.  We are fortunate to have an abundance of various natural resources, and a population that is particularly ingenious and hard working.  It seems foolish in the extreme to behave in such a fashion that either ignores or squanders these gifts, but what I see us doing is exactly that, in fact, with such rapidity and self-righteousness that we have traveled from foolishness to tragedy.  We find ourselves deeply engaged in a war in the Mid-East for the second time in a dozen years that has the hallmark of “Oil” written all over it, in spite of all the rhetoric about “terrorism” and “democracy.”

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, it is clear that we can only be better off if we reduce (eventually down to zero!) the amount of oil we are importing.