CLOSER LOOK: SIPS HOUSE WITH ROOM IN THE ROOF

Mick Toms project managed the building of his five-bedroom, 465m2 house near Burnley, which replaced a bungalow on the same site. He used SIPS@CLAYS to supply the structural system – and had already made his mind up about SIPS before buying the bungalow. A quick build time was his chief motive, with creating an energy-efficient home a smaller but nonetheless important factor.

The SIPS construction system delivered the speed Mick was looking for. “We moved out of the bungalow in March and were back in our new house by mid-october,” he says. This cut down on the disruption to family life and meant they only had to rent a nearby property for six months.

Mick briefed his architect to design a home with a fairly regular box shape as he knew this would be a cost-effective way to use the panelised system. One pleasant surprise was finding out how much more space they would have in the top-floor bedrooms, since a SIPS roof construction doesn’t have trusses.

“I find it quite hard to believe that people are still building in any other way,” says Mick. As well as being delighted with the system himself, Mick has also converted his architect, who had not designed a SIPS house before but is now working on further projects using the method for other clients.