Green in Medusa

SIPS Vs. Modular: Tradeoffs

As their architects and friends we want to congratulate Stephenie and Baldomero and welcome Joaquin to this crazy world of ours. He’s one lucky kid.

Regarding Joaquin’s new house, we’re getting close to reaching a firm number although this pricing process has been especially challenging because for all the reasons B+S have written about to date. This post - long overdue - is to further define consequences of the team’s choice to work with module over SIPs. B+S explained the reasons we all selected modular – no matter how we ran the numbers a modular house is less expensive and has a smaller potential for cost overruns than SIPs. The variations in sustainable considerations – R-value, material content, construction waste – are impressive on both counts and therefore didn’t factor into the decision as much as the cost.

Most of the revisions that came out of our module decision are site and foundation based such as slab-on-grade versus Superiorwall foundation

SIP'S vs. Modular - Insulation and the Building Envelope

The title of this post is me showing off some of the terms I've learned since starting this project. Matthew Radune at Lynn Gaffney Architect has been awesome at giving me lots of undiluted information.

In comparing both SIP's and Modular construction, insulation is a big actor. One of the points on our original brief to architects was that we wanted a well insulated house that would be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. This requires a well insulated and tight building envelope that would limit the amount of air moving through the walls thereby affecting the indoor temperature.

Here is a basic comparison using the materials we are currently looking at working with.