 Today we're in a unique house, it's called a SIPP house, structurally insulated panels and it looks like your traditional stick frame house, but what they have is all these panels, all these wall panels are made up of OSB, sandwiching, rigid insulation in between. And the nice thing about this, what it does, it creates a thermal break so that heat transfer can't transfer through these walls very easily because it's broken by that insulation in between and all these wall panels, they come in prefabricated so they'll come in as one solid wall panel to bring them in with a crane, set them in place and then set the next one next to it and seal it up nice and tight so you don't have those air gaps going through. Extremely energy efficient and extremely airtight and it's a solid feeling house too. The big benefits of structural panels is the air infiltration. It is truly airtight almost, I mean there's lots of little things you have to go back and foam, little gaps and whatnot, but when you're done with a structural panel home it gives it just a superior building envelope, there's very little thermal bridging. Jim could you kind of talk about how these panels go together, you know exactly where are the panels and how you make sure they seal up tight together. This is a rough panel and they can vary in thickness, this is about a 10 inch panel. It's about an R40 in that neighborhood. R value is more important is the effectiveness of an R value. Blown fiberglass insulation, you could have this big thick area up in a blown attic, R50 but air goes right into it and you lose it as the temperature drops, the effectiveness just disappears, whereas this is a very high performing R value and that performance is really the key. But this is a four foot wide panel, they're joined together in this company's case they use a plywood I-beam, there's brand names, TGI's, trust choices, but that is nailed on both sides so that's joining these mechanically. They're also foamed and sealed together when you put them together, but that's four feet wide, that thick and this spans from the plate down there all the way to the roof, this is probably about an 18 foot panel here and they have tremendous strength to get up to 24 feet long. Jim, how about the cost difference between a regular stick frame built house versus a sit panel house? Structural panels typically are going to run you a little bit more, but if you were to try to achieve even close to the same energy efficiency that you could achieve with structural panel, it would cost you more. So it depends on what your goals are in terms of if you're after energy efficiency it's going to be cheaper to do it with sit structural panels. The other thing is there's little tricks to building structural panels, actually more affordable than stick framing. It's understanding what these panels can do for you. Story and half construction can be very cost effective when you're gaining that. Everything underneath that roof line is a conditioned airspace, so you want to make use of those areas for living. Those triangles make good storage down in the Eve area and the center area gives you some nice room, but understanding how they work and if you work with somebody that has some experience with structural panel they'd be able to coach a person fairly effectively how to do a good cost effective design. A lot of the design goes into it. Jim, I notice there's some holes I can see straight to the outside here. How do you take care of those with these sit houses? Well, we're still in the construction phase here and what has to happen yet is wiring and so forth, so we usually wait till the electricians are done because sometimes we'll use those little right above the bottom plate there to string some wires along, but then when he's done we come back with foam and we close up all of that and there's actually a foam wedge block that gets inserted as well. Jim, how about the time it takes to put one of these houses together versus maybe compared to a stick frame house? Well, I've got someone with me that's put up most of my sit panel homes. It doesn't take a crew of ten guys where a stick frame house takes a big crew. This takes a crew of only a couple to three guys at the most. Basically the panels you're lifting are four feet wide by eight feet, nine feet high on the walls and then your roof panels are a little bigger, of course, which takes a machine, but a crane or a forklift or something like that plus a couple men. But it's a lot quicker because you don't have guys carrying lumber for you. You don't have guys nailing it together and sheeting and it just takes a big crew that way. And it's already insulated too. It's already insulated. So the steps are, there's several steps eliminated by putting them together. Okay. Makes me also think of the job sites. We have a lot less waste. We, our dumpsters don't get filled up because we don't have all the stuff that you're cutting off, you know, when you're sheathing a roof, there's all these waste things. And the factories are really good about using all their little waste. I've toured several factories. It's amazing how efficient they are. If these panels are full of foam, how do I get my wires? Or how do you work the wiring in this? So first question a contractor asked me, you know, that hasn't done sips before. And all the panels that they'll have wire chases built in. I don't know if you can see this right here that this this they'll make these holes. And it's done in the foam, every company is a little different. Before they laminate the panels up is very common. But that'll go all the way, this line actually marks the fact there's a channel here. This line marks is a vertical one right there. And so we can actually feed from above and then, you know, wire chases. If we have to put an access here and if it's not an outlet, they'll just cover that back up again, we'll foam it shut. Another thing that's real important when you do a sit panel home is pre-planning. Here you'll see they've marked a three by three vent chase. But this is for his plumbing stack that's going to go all the way up through this panel and then eventually through the roof so we can vent out our plumbing. We try to avoid that, but there's sometimes where you just you're on an outside wall and you need to do a vent chase, it's doable. It's just making sure you sit down with that blueprint. Most companies will have you sign off and you need to think things through. Sit down with your builder and go, okay, what do we have going on here? Do we have a plasma TV we want to put on a wire? We want special wire chases to that or we've got plumbing on an outside wall? Really you can think anything through. Okay, Jim, can you kind of talk us through, you know, just show us the panel and talk about the aspects of it right here? This is a structural panel, it's a four inch wall, which these are just some leftover panels from another project of mine. This is an R19 and R value. And again, it's a very pure R value, there's no studs in the wall. This gets routed out for a piece of lumber to fit in here. Here's a wire chase, this is a different manufacturer and they actually burn a square chase in and it's before they laminate the board up. And this panel is really unique and it's got a fire-intimescent coating on it. And I've got a special purpose that I build some things that I get away with not having any drywall. And so it's a little trick of my trade anyway for some stuff I'm doing. But these two skins are just laminated under high pressure on that foam and it's amazingly strong. It's just, you can't, this is really very strong. It can't pull apart very easy. And that's what, that's a sit panel right there.