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Every Sunlight home comes as a Component Package, which includes complete custom home design services along with a materials package. We provide the super insulated, structural (SIP) shell of our homes along with highly insulated triple pane windows and doors. This ensures that the most important materials in our homes are consistently high quality. Sunlight homes have some of the highest insulation values and structural strength ratings in the industry.
Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS) |
Sunlight homes are not frame construction. We use structural insulated panels (SIPs) for the walls and roofs of our homes. This building system is superior to 2x6" frame construction in strength, tightness and insulating value. It is also much more fire resistant. We have been using SIPs for over 30 years and have yet to find a building system we like better!
Since we design our homes specifically for the SIP building system, we are able to take advantage of the benefits that SIPs have to offer in design. In SIP construction, roof trusses are unnecessary, so ceilings naturally have more volume and lofts become possible. Our homes' structural shell is much stronger than conventional construction. The composite insulation value in our walls is R-37 and our roofs, R-42.
In our Component Package we also include high-end, triple-pane windows. These Designer Series windows by Pella™ are aluminum-clad wood with triple-pane, Low-E glass. We also supply Pella™ insulated exterior doors on our packages.
The third main material we supply with our Component Packages is a lumber package. Normally purchased from a lumber yard close to the building site, the lumber package includes all lumber for interior frame walls, the wood truss joist floor system and the framing lumber for porches and the frame garage. Material upgrades are available.
In our opinion, if you have a good design that uses the sun to its advantage along with a well insulated exterior shell that does a better job of buffering the inside climate from the outside, you've addressed the most important comfort and sustainability issues for your new home. Other finish materials (lighting, flooring, cabinets, wall finishes) can always be upgraded later, but it's much more difficult and expensive to change your design or upgrade your structural shell once the home is finished.
Back when energy was cheap, many people opted for standard frame construction and wowwy finishes without thinking much about sustainability and energy efficiency. Spec and tract builders trimmed design and materials costs to have more money for fancy finishes and fixtures. Today the tide is turning and, with energy costs sure to rise, more people want their homes to be more self sufficient, healthy and green. This is a big step in the right direction and these homes, we're convinced, will become a much better long-term investment. |
