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Stronger than Brick & Blocks
Faster to Build with
Unbeatable Thermal Performance
Dealer / Distributors
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Ideal For
Developers & Self Builders
External Walls & Roof
Panels from as little as £55 per Sq Meter! |
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This Structural Insulated
Panel, Building uses the "SIPTEC Duplex
SIP" with two 10cm U cores, &
alternative load path technology.
Giving
wall & roof U Values of 0.094 w/m²k
Siptec Duplex meets
proposed building U Values / specs of
2013!
Technical
Summary
The generic design brief
for this unique concept is now a reality
and is the result of collaboration
between several of the leading
authorities in low energy, environment
conscious design. A design that is
highly engineered from first principles
and may be applied to any house in any
sector of the market,
bee
it a low cost housing association
property for rent or an individually
designed luxury detached home.
Construction
The main structure will
be an advanced Siptec composite
construction. It will be highly
engineered and manufactured in factory
controlled conditions in the form of
elevation Siptec panels", and all door
and window apertures prepared,
integrated into the panels. These panels
will be assembled on site, using
specialised jointing profiles to archive
an airtight construction. The Siptec
Duplex Panels will have OSB / Cement
board facings, CPB. Each house will be
pressure tested to ensure that there is
minimum leakage, an important feature as
the internal environment will be
carefully controlled.
Environmental
Sustainability
Every component that is
included in the specification will have
been selected for its low environmental
impact not only during its useful life
but in its manufacture and disposal or
recycling. Life-cycle analysis will be
carried out on all materials used in
recycled. By means of assessment and
certification, the house will be shown
to be a sustainable development.
Water Management
Internally, inbuilt
systems will filter and store rainwater
for re-use within the house and will
dramatically reduce the amount of water
to be supplied by the utilities.
Externally, storm water
source control will be implemented by
means of porous, surfacing materials and
underground storage so that water may be
retained for later re-use or allowed to
infiltrate in to the soil.
Internal Environment
The levels of
potentially hazardous materials in a
typical new home are significant. The
health and welfare of the occupants will
be of prime importance and materials
will be selected for their inert
properties. The use of organically based
materials that do not emit toxic fumes
will ensure that any potential hazards
to health that may be encountered by
using certain man-made materials will be
avoided.
Fire Safety
The best that is offered
to purchaser of new homes is smoke
alarms to protect them in the event of a
fire and a great deal of campaigning
has, quite rightly, been carried out to
encourage people to retrofit these
devices into homes that do not have
them. Whilst we would not seek to
denigrate this philosophy, the smoke
alarm offers a very basic level of
protection against fire when so much
more could be done. It simply provides a
warning that a fire has already
established itself to enable the
occupants to evacuate the building as we
have all seen how quickly a fire can
take hold.
The philosophy of the
"Siphouse" is that prevention is better
than cure. The Proposed "Siphouse" Home"
offers a minimum 1 hour fire resistance
as standard (at least 2 times better
than timber frame), in addition an
automated sprinkler system will protect
each room. This will be triggered when a
fire starts and will respond with a high
pressure burst to douse the flames
before they take hold. The process will
re-arm itself and continue to operate
until the fire is extinguished. This
system provides maximum protection but
with minimum damage to property
(considerable water damage may occur to
property when an established fire has to
be put out b the fire brigade) and
finally, it will dramatically reduce the
number of fires that require attendance
by the Fire Brigade.
Each room of the house
will form an individual cell that will
be isolated in the event of a fire.
There will be no unprotected paths
between rooms where fire or smoke may be
allowed to spread and intumescent fire
seals will be integral to all openings.
Security
This is another example
where designing in at the design stage
can make the system cost-effective. All
external openings will be wired to
respond in the event of a break-in. They
will be connected to a central control
unit, linked to the computer and in turn
to the authorities. Other new products
will be included where appropriate such
as, central locking, the "smoke cloak"
designed to fill the room with dense
smoke to incapacitate any intruder.
External security will also feature
strongly and the community aspects will
be incorporated into the general housing
scheme.
Design Flexibility
and Lifetime Homes
The technology employed
allows these houses to be built without
internal support walls, which in turn,
opens up new design possibilities. In
particular, a "lifetime homes" principle
allows the house to be developed in
phases. For example a terraced street
could be built with the basic structure
of the houses so that there is a
consistent and completed look to the
street. The internal layout of each
house could then be completed to suit
the different circumstances of each
occupant. One dwelling could be split
into 2 flats or 1 flat and 1 maisonette.
Another option might be a single
dwelling starting life as a ground floor
flat with the upstairs undeveloped and
no stairway. Phase 2 would add the
stairway and develop the first floor and
phase 3 would add a further stairway
into a room-in-the- roof expansion.
Room-in-the-roof will be
standard and basements will be
encouraged, resulting in a far better
land use with a potential doubling of
the living space for the same footprint.
The Core Design
A typical house built
today might have the fuse box in the
garage, the boiler hanging on the wall
in the kitchen, the hot water cylinder
in the ‘airing’ cupboard on the first
floor and a cold water storage tank in
the loft. It will use copper pipes for
the water supply system, which will
weave their way through the house in a
myriad of bends and joints, and standard
copper covered wire for the electrical
supply. All services will run through
walls or be buried under concrete making
them difficult to maintain, modify or
extend. Even the most advanced system
built houses resort the traditional
methods and materials for the services,
often undermining the advantaged gained
by the system.
The Advanced
Sustainable "SipHouse" :
- will be based on a core design
principle that may be likened to the
engine of a car and which facilitates
ease of access to services i.e., no
buried pipes and a service manual with
each house. A centralised "control room!
Will contain all of the supply units
e.g., boiler, fuse box, water storage,
security control unit, fire protection
system, recycling storage unit etc. The
rest of the house will be connected to
the control room via an output port.
Continuous lengths of flexible
polyethylene pipe will provide the
water, whilst electrical bus bar units,
which are linked via plug-in cabling,
supply the electrical service. All
services are routed through a dedicated
channel running at the base of each
wall, forming a continuous path
throughout the house. Skirting board
will be easily demountable to facilitate
access to services for maintenance and
modification, which will be easily
achieved.
This core design will
act as a common "thread" that runs
through every house and will be totally
transparent to any design that may be
overlaid. This enables flexibility of
design without compromising performance
in any way.
Product Set
The generic house design
will be based on "Whole House
Engineering" principles and will
comprise a Product Set of components
from suppliers who can meet the strict
criteria laid down by Siptec. These
"Solution Provider" companies will work
closely with Siptec to perfect the
design and will install and support the
products that they supply. This will
facilitate a more cohesive approach in a
controlled factory environment and marks
a move away from the fragmented approach
currently adopted where work is "put out
to tender" or "subcontracted" to
external tradesman.
Guarantee
Due to the fact that the
suppliers are involved at the outset and
their products are integrated into the
design, they will have the confidence to
support the installations on a long-term
basis, which leads naturally towards a
true peace-of-mind guarantee. The basis
of this is that if the house is built
correctly with components that have been
designed to work together, there will be
less to go wrong and when it does, it
will be easily curable. It is the
intention to offer a maintenance and
support contract of the type currently
seen in the computer industry where a
specified response time is offered.
Energy Log Book
Sophisticated in-house
systems will control and monitor energy
usage, enabling another new innovation,
the Energy Log Book to provide proof of
performance by means of an integral
computer. Not only will this provide
information about the running costs of
the house, it will enable individual
appliances to be analysed and potential
problems may be addressed. This
monitoring will also extend to safety
protection such as burglary and fire.
Once the importance of energy efficient
homes is picked up by the general
public, homes like these, which may cost
several hundred pounds a year less to
run, will not only be more attractive to
a potential purchaser but will also
command a much higher resale value.
The Green Mortgage
The current system of
house purchase requires the potential
purchaser to search for a suitable
lender to provide the mortgage, who will
then arrange a survey in order to
establish that the house is mortgageable.
All this takes time, creates uncertainty
and incurs expense.
Why should the mortgage
be a separate entity? The Green Mortgage
will be part of the Product Set already
described. It will be the first of its
kind and will be designed to exploit the
payback mechanism offered by the energy
efficient features. This works by making
more capital available, which is
subsequently repaid by the house itself
by way of lower running costs.
Alternatively, it may make up a
shortfall in salary multiples enabling
the house that would previously have
been out or reach to be attainable.
Since any expansions of
the living accommodation will be
pre-planned at the outset, the mortgage
can be tailored to take these into
account, so that the owner will be able
to plan a long-term financial strategy
that will be structured over the full
evolution of the house.
Builders, developers and
Housing associations, interested in
participation should contact Siptec
Click Here to Contact Siptec
© Structural Insulated
Panel Technology Ltd 2002
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