Eco Friendly SIP Panels Manufacturer & Supplier UK

Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) are a building system that can be used in commercial and residential building construction. They can be used for walls, roofs, flooring, stairs and roofs. SIPs are made from expanded polystyrene enclosed by a steel mesh. SIP panels benefit construction by being strong but lightweight, being highly thermally efficient, quick to put in place and ecologically friendly.

Insulated Concrete Formwork (ICF) is a construction system that uses insulation moulds that are already put in place on-site to apply concrete too. The moulds then provide thermal insulation. This makes it a quick building system that provides excellent thermal insulation.

Although the Green Life Buildings SIP manufacturing facility is relatively new to the UK, there are over 1 million buildings made using eco-friendly M2 technology around the world and you can see examples of them on the projects page.

While the GLB M2 shell can be erected in hours, it depends on how the house is being constructed. For a single home of 9 x 5m at height 8.3m we could make a 4 bed with two bathrooms in this footprint and provide c.120m2 of floor space over ground, on the first and second floor. Using a rendered finish, the build would be less than three months from finalisation of design to handover, allowing time for the concrete to cure (28 days).

A six-home project would be completed in five months, with a five-person team, by moving between them as the concrete cures. This can be further scaled to give extra homes in the same time scale with additional team members. A twelve-home project would be able to be completed in five months with a nine-person team.

For large-scale projects we can provide several hundred homes in less than five months, but we are restricted by the capacity of the building site and not the factory. Our factory has the current capacity for more than 4000 SQM of panels per day, based on a 400 SQM building, that is 10 houses per day, which can be increased as required.

Other options include precast units that could be made away from the building site, ready to be craned into position either as panels or modules. The disadvantage here is that precast units limit your design flexibility.

The single panel is structural to four stories and if used as internal walls then all elements are structural. For larger structures, the M2 double panel is suitable.

In the UK we can specify plasterboard on the internal walls to allow for extensions and movement of fittings. All ceilings have a height void from 38mm- 75mm which again makes movement of fittings easier for homes that do not use the plasterboard approach. A wall chaser will allow new chases to be cut before hitting the mesh.