Eco-Panels occupies a unique niche in the world of building products and building design and construction. Would you believe that the stud framed building code does not clarify how two exterior walls should securely come together at a corner? You can use either lots of lumber to have a very strong wall connection, or you can have almost no lumber at the corner to have a more insulated connection &#; and then you will also have a much weaker connection compared with other methods. So even if you consider testing standards for &#;meeting building code&#; &#; the building code (based on the 200 yr old technology of small wood frame construction) requirement to build a corner does not exist to consider the way Eco-Panels can join two walls together &#; and our experience and testing shows us that it can be considerably stronger than traditional frame construction.
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When Eco-Panels receives a house plan, our intent is to achieve your architectural design by using our panels as efficiently as possible to help our clients keep their costs low. So any wall that has windows and door openings is reimagined in a series of mostly vertically aligned rectangles that will represent our panels. If the main wall system of a structure is inside of the limits of 40&#; wide by 60&#; long by 10&#; tall (not including gable ends) &#; let&#;s call this a &#;BASIC&#; designed home &#; then our team can often make very fast work of engineering considerations, because this falls within the realm of accepted structural design of a stud framed home.
If a home is more complex than 40&#;x60&#;x10&#; (again, not including gable ends), or if your home will be located in a &#;high load&#; zone like on a mountain top or at the coast, then additional structural engineering measures will come into play.
IF YOU OR YOUR ARCHITECT HAVE HIRED A STRUCTURAL ENGINEER &#; this is good, because this engineer &#; often known as an EOR or Engineer of Record &#; will identify the environmental loads (&#;loads&#; are forces acting upon another object, like your future home) required for the structure of the house to withstand in order to be resilient and durable over time. Many of these loads will be INDEPENDENT of how the home will be built. These will most often include, but not limited to:
Your structural engineer will then need to take this wind/seismic/snow load information &#; coupled with all of the information related to the design of your house (again, often independent of the materials being used) and perform the standard calculations on your custom home to determine things like the uplift forces we will need to counteract, and at what critical locations, as well as appropriate shear forces, etc. Interior point loads will also need to be clearly identified and magnitude of load defined. Per building code, this information will need to be generated by a structural engineer if the building is outside of the traditional 60x40x10 single story or two-story building envelope or within a high-load design region as previously noted.
We work with a Professional Engineer on our side who is familiar with our panels. If you choose to engage our Professional Engineer for special services or designs that fall outside of what we have called a &#;BASIC&#; designed home, a separate fee will be required and the request must be in writing prior to the start of the design process. Your structural engineer will provide the noted load values and our engineer will assist to ensure that the resulting panel design meets the load requirements prescribed by your engineer. For example, in high wind zones, additional measures are often required to hold down wall systems to the floor platform. We can achieve this in a couple of ways, from lapping the exterior siding over the rim band or base plates of the floor platform to embedding blocking inside our panels so that &#;hurricane straps&#; or similar can be strapped directly to our wall panels, ensuring a tight connection with the floor or slab.
Stated differently, the Engineer of Record determines the potential forces acting on a home at all appropriate locations, and Eco-Panels can propose a strategy for overcoming those forces. Our structural engineer will (when engaged and for states where licensed) stamp the designs for the wall and roof panels, but the EOR must own the overall process and stamp the designs for the rest of the house. In summary &#; it is not Eco-Panels&#; responsibility to do the load calculations for a home &#; rather it is our duty to ensure that the ultimate design of our panel array can meet or exceed the home&#;s load requirements identified by your structural engineer.
How much do they cost, what is the best way to install them, and where are they the cheapest? A short introductory guide to thermal insulation sandwich panels.
A sandwich panel is a product used to clad the walls and roofs of buildings. Each panel comprises a core of thermoinsulating material, skinned on both sides with sheet metal. Sandwich panels are not structural materials but curtain materials. The structural forces are carried by the steel framework or other carrier frame to which the sandwich panels are attached.
The types of sandwich panel are generally grouped by the thermoinsulating material used as the core. Sandwich panels with cores of EPS (expanded polystyrene), mineral wool and polyurethane (PIR, or polyisocyanurate) are all readily available.
The materials mainly vary in their thermal insulating performance, sound insulating performance, reaction to fire and weight.
Sandwich panels are widely acclaimed due to a number of benefits, mainly those related to cost. Comparisons between frame or stud partition technology (frames lined with sandwich panels) and traditional building technologies based on masonry walls reveal advantages of sandwich panels in three key areas:
Construction of a building in either technology requires similar capital expenditure levels.
The comparison in this area includes the costs of construction materials, labour and shipping.
A building based on a traditional masonry process may take 6 to 7 months to complete.
A building of the same volume utilising stud partitions takes just 1 month to complete.
The construction time is business-critical. The sooner a production building or warehouse is commissioned for use, the sooner a return on the investment can be achieved.
Stud partition buildings are assembled rather than &#;built&#;. The finished structural parts and cladding components arrive on site, and are then assembled like a house of toy bricks. Another plus is that there is no need to wait for the building shell to lose excess moisture.
In some sectors of industry, the construction requirements can be critical for a building project. Stud partition construction is a &#;dry process&#;, with no water needed for the construction materials. A dry process requires only the assembly of the structure and fixing of the cladding (here, the sandwich panels) with screws.
Traditional masonry construction uses &#;wet processes&#;, which require significant amounts of water to make the mortar for bricklaying, concrete for casting or the plaster for rendering.
Some sectors of industry, like wood processing or pharmaceutical manufacture, require fixed and controlled relative humidity levels, which preclude wet construction processes.
The cost of purchase depends on the overall product thickness and its thermoinsulating core material. A &#;budget option&#; is the use of EPS-core sandwich panels; however, for better long-term performance and cost effectiveness, panels with superior thermal conductivity coefficient are a better choice - such as PIR-core sandwich panels.
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The pricing begins at 55&#;60 PLN/m2 for thin EPS-core sandwich panels. The most popular PIR-core sandwich panels are 100 mm thick, and cost about 80&#;90 PLN/m2.
Customers often ask about the VAT rate for sandwich panels. In Poland, all construction materials, including sandwich panels, have a 23% VAT rate.
It is best to order your sandwich panels directly from the manufacturer or through their distribution chain. You can request Balex Metal's regional sales representatives to visit your site for professional advice concerning the best processes and materials. Having examined your requirements, the sales representative can quickly supply you with a custom quote. Customer care by the sales representatives aside, you can get support from Balex Metal's design engineers or technical consultants at every stage of project delivery.
Sandwich panels are easy and quick to install. From practical experience, installing 600 m2 of sandwich panels takes approximately 8 hours for a proficient construction crew.
The steps to install wall and roof sandwich panels are as follows:
1. The construction materials are delivered to the site: the delivery includes sandwich panels, the subframe components (cold-formed shapes), and accessories (including flashing, fasteners, gaskets, seals, etc.). Balex Metal can provide all the components required to complete the installation process.
2. The materials delivered by the carrier are unloaded with construction handling equipment.
3. The subframes are assembled, and installed with beams, posts and purlins.
4. The protective film is removed from the sandwich panels.
5. The sandwich panels are fastened to the subframe structural members using suitable fasteners.
6. The joints between the sandwich panels are sealed and the flashing is installed.
How many screws do I need to fasten a sandwich panel? This is the most common question from customers at the project preparation stage. A rough estimate is 1.1 fasteners per square metre of sandwich panels. The actual number, spacing and layout depend on the decision of the project design engineer and/or the construction material supplier.
Learn more about installing sandwich panels:
Any type of sandwich panel will do as cladding for walls and roofs. Depending on the project needs, the cladding may include:
Sandwich panels can be utilised in all structure types. Your imagination is the limit. However, while sandwich panels are generally used in industrial applications, some housing projects also use stud partitions and sandwich panels.
Given the short installation time and large unit coverage, sandwich panels are most popular in constructing:
Sandwich panels can be combined with other structural solutions. A popular option is to install the panels as external cladding for the outer walls of shopping malls, including sandwich-layered roofing structures: box profile sheets, thermal insulation (e.g. Thermano PIR-core sandwich panels), and a waterproof membrane.
Want more information on polyurethane insulated panel? Feel free to contact us.