Less sexy home-show displays worth look

Visitors to the Dispatch Home & Garden Show, which ends today, will find plenty of furniture, cleaning products, spas, flags, art and other home accessories.

Then there are the other exhibits, which have all the pizazz of a construction site and can be easy to miss.

But those displays could be the most important ones for homeowners because they speak to the long-term strength of a home. A few examples:

■ Lamit Industries of Columbus and Insulspan of Blissfield, Michigan, are showcasing structural insulated panels at the show. The panels, called “SIPs,” are basically foam sandwiched between wood panels. Despite their terrific insulating, structural and noise-deadening qualities, SIPs have been slow to catch on. They can be more expensive than traditional stud construction, and many contractors would rather stick with familiar products.

“The challenge is just getting the knowledge out there,” said Jamie Thompson, a sales representative with Insulspan.

■ Along similar lines, the Medway, Ohio, firm of Holdfast Technologies is promoting the Nudura insulated concrete-and-foam foundation system at the show. There’s nothing flashy about the product, but it’s worth a look, even for doit-yourselfers. The Nudura system amounts to Legolike foam panels that are hollow in the middle, allowing for concrete to be poured inside to create a solid core.

Holdfast’s sales rep, Jennifer Hilty, said the system is comparably priced to a conventional poured-concrete foundation, in part because drywall can be put directly onto the foam without adding insulation and studs.

■ Roofers have long been prominent at the show, and the past few years have