SIPs

There is a shortage of low-cost housing and school buildings. Although there have been recent drives from our real estate developers to lower the cost of home ownership, there is still about two to three million households that need low to moderate-income housing. If only there was a cheaper way to build.

Majority of our students nationwide continue to attend their public school classes in corridors, if not on the streets. Although a lot of the problem stems from budgetary constraints, a lower-cost material could still produce more school buildings.

In a recent article in Forbes magazine, I came upon a potential solution – SIPs, which stands for Structural Insulated Panels. (Not sipsip, the favorite pre-occupation of our government sycophants.)

SIP is basically four to 10 inches of expanded polystyrene, which is in the same family as the famous Styrofoam, sandwiched between two cement sheets. You might say a SIP-built home is like living inside a coffee cup.

Recent studies show that SIP-built houses can handle 17 percent more load (technically axial load in pounds per linear foot), and has a higher R-value rating, which means better insulation against our hot weather. Don’t you ever wonder why we can hold hot coffee in a Styrofoam cup?) And, of course, my favorite reason to do SIP-built houses: it costs about 20 percent less than the traditional concrete and wood.

One of the suppliers even demonstrates the strength of the panel by parking a three-ton pick-up truck on a 24-foot SIPs’ ramp without zero sag. A wood ramp would have sagged by one-and-a-half inches. According to the article, these SIPs panels can interlock like Legos which means they can be assembled faster at one-third the time the traditional house is built without using skilled labor.

My Two Cents: There you have it, cheaper cost of material, cheaper labor, one-third the time to put together and stronger.

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Dickson Co is CFO (C is for Cheap) for Dfnn, Intelligent Wave Philippines and HatchAsia.com. For comments or suggestions, e-mail [email protected].