Anyone out there have experience with estimating the cost of new electrical for a SIP house in comparison to traditional stick construction? Has anyone done electrical on a SIP house who can give any input on problems you ran into or hidden costs? How long did it take to do your rough in as compared to what it would have been conventional? We are about to rough in our first SIP house and are looking to give the owner a decent time and cost estimate!
Thanks in advance,
Chris.
We paid slightly higher than what stick built would have cost even though the SIP manufacturer had all the exterior and ceiling chases built into the panel allowing the wire to be run up the walls fairly easily (even from the basement to the 2nd floor on some circuits through single wall panels) rather than having to drill through base plates, 2x's etc. Reason being is that a) the chases are never all exactly right, b) you make changes after the panels have been manufactured (deleting wall sconces, ceiling lighting, etc. (we paid an additional $600 for re-routing some interior closet wires due to a couple of closet lights being relocated after the fact), and c) the floor joists will inevitably get in the way of some of the lower level entry points of the wire. The good news is that all outside fixtures/outlets are sealed and will not lead to much, if any, air leakage.
Mike
What's a "SIP" house?
Chris -
We used SIPS attached to a timber frame but never used the wire chases on the panels.... instead we either ran the electric under the floor or along a "wall" we built between the vertical timbers (the wall created a shelf beneath each window). But... from our conversations with the panel makers, the only issue was that part of the electric (rough) needed to be installed prior to panel installation and that some of the wiring needed to occur at the same time panels were being installed.
Chris -
We used SIPS attached to a timber frame but never used the wire chases on the panels.... instead we either ran the electric under the floor or along a "wall" we built between the vertical timbers (the wall created a shelf beneath each window). But... from our conversations with the panel makers, the only issue was that part of the electric (rough) needed to be installed prior to panel installation and that some of the wiring needed to occur at the same time panels were being installed.
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