Building SIP walls on the ground

The SIP panels that I ordered are kind of like a giant puzzle. Because they are joined by tongue-and-groove seams, there is occasionally a "preordained" sequence that must be followed in order to assemble the panels. And sometimes, this means trying to fit small panels on top of large panels 30+ feet in the air. Getting everything square and aligned with the timber frame and then inserting windows into the walls (at this elevation) can be quite difficult. Searching for a simpler (and safer) way to accomplish this, I decided to assemble ten of the panels together on the ground and fly them together all at once. In fact, we prehung the two most difficult windows in the assembly before flying it on to the timber frame. The photo-collage shows the sequence of events.

To keep things from bowing when the crane lifted the whole shebang, we made "walers" and "stiffbacks" out of 2x10s and secured them to the panels, . We first did a test lift with only the small window in place. After observing that the assembled bowed very little during the test lift, I decided to place the large semi-circular window into the assebmly as well. I would guess the semicircular window (8 feet by 5 feet) weighs over 250 lbs (it is difficult for 3 men to handle on solid ground), and putting it into place after the wall was lifted would have been no fun. To lessen the risk of cracking the large window during the lift, we only partially drove the nails that hold the window's nailing fin to the wall. This gave a little bit of play between the very rigid glass and the semi-rigid panels. It was a risk-vs-reward decision and the risk paid off for us.

As soon as we had the giant wall in place next to the timberframe, we quickly drove several of the panel screws into the frame, and then removed the crane rigging. This picture shows this interior wall of the timberframe and how its braces align with the windows. My wife and I morphed this design from several pictures we saw in magazines. We spent hours iterating between commercial window offerings and possible brace locations and radii. We are really pleased with how it turned out.

By the way, my wife selected all of the windows for our house, and ended up ordering about 70% Jeld-Wen brand windows and 30% Andersen brand windows. The styles are very similar, so if you pay attention, you can use the two brands together in the same room. The decision to use Jeld-Wen windows was largely price-driven, and Andersen windows were used only where Jeld-Wen did not have a viable offering for what we needed. With that said, I can tell you that the Jeld Wen windows appear to us to be of a much higher quality than the Andersen windows, even though the Jeld Wen windows are about 2/3's of the price! One reason the Jeld Wen windows seem so much sturdier could be that they have an aluminum exterior cladding whereas the Andersen windows have vinyl exterior cladding. The aluminum makes the wooden windows stronger, whereas the vinyl cladding more-or-less just protects the wooden windows. Of course the vinyl won't conduct heat as readily as the aluminum, but when you handle and install the aluminum clad windows, they feel like they're in a league above the vinyl clad windows. I should also mention that the aluminum nailing fin on the Jeld Wen windows lays a lot flatter on the exterior wall after being nailed. I will admit that I was a skeptic when my wife suggested buying "Jeld Wen" windows, whose name I couldn't even pronounce, but now I must concede that she really did her research.