How SIP Construction Helped Rebuild a 125-Year-Old Synagogue Without Losing Its History

August 25, 2026August 24, 2026 by ACME PANEL

Finished exterior of Sag Harbor Synagogue renovated with SIPs

How SIP Construction Helped Rebuild a 125-Year-Old Synagogue Without Losing Its History

Structural insulated panels (SIPs) are high-performance roof, wall, and floor building panels made of a rigid foam insulation core structurally bonded between two structural facings, used in place of conventional stick framing. They deliver a tighter building envelope, lower heating and cooling loads, and faster on-site assembly. At Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, New York, they did something SIPs rarely get asked to do: help rebuild a 19th-century sanctuary from the inside out while keeping it looking exactly like itself.

Temple Adas Israel, originally known as Mischan Israel, is the oldest synagogue on Long Island. Services were first held in the building in 1898. By 2021, the congregation needed more than the original structure could give it: a basement level, real handicap accessibility, expanded classroom and community space, and a sanctuary big enough for a growing congregation. None of that could come at the cost of the building’s identity. The renovation had to add square footage without erasing 125 years of history.

Project Highlights

→ Renovation and expansion of an 1898 synagogue, the oldest on Long Island, with a two-year congregation displacement during construction

→ Three wall panel thicknesses (4 5/8″, 6 1/2″, 8 1/4″) and two roof panel thicknesses (8 1/4″, 10 1/4″), matched to different parts of the building

→ ACME jumbo panels precut at the factory, including circular and domed window openings

→ New basement and sub-basement housing classrooms, a library, and the building’s original mikvah, plus HVAC and electrical

→ Architect Bill Chaleff of Chaleff & Rogers, builder RLW4 Builders

→ Runner-Up Classic, Renovations category, 2026 SIPA Building Excellence Awards

The Project

The scope was not a simple addition. The original 1898 building actually sits beyond its own property line, with the historic entrance on Atlantic Avenue leading straight up a flight of steps into the sanctuary. The renovation, led by architect Bill Chaleff of Chaleff & Rogers Architects in Water Mill, added roughly 12 feet to the front of the building to expand the sanctuary, then recreated the original corner pillars and their triangular caps, which had been lost decades earlier. From the street, it still reads as the same building. Chaleff even used the siding pattern to preserve the visual impression of the old front staircase, though the real entrance moved to the side of the building.

That new entrance opens into a glass stairwell that connects the main level to a new basement below, with an elevator serving both levels for accessibility. The main level added a community room with a barrel-vaulted, coffered ceiling, its wood panels held in place by gravity and designed to be replaced with stained glass down the road. Sturdy folding panels separate the community room from the sanctuary, so the two spaces can open into one for larger gatherings. Below, the new basement holds three classrooms, a library, and the building’s original mikvah, the ritual bath once used by the congregation’s Orthodox women, preserved behind glass as part of the building’s history rather than removed. A tall sub-basement below that houses the HVAC plant and electrical controls the older building never had room for.

The project wasn’t simple to build, either. What began as a $6 million bid grew to $7.3 million as COVID-era shortages forced material substitutions across the two-year build. Construction started in 2021. The congregation, displaced to Sag Harbor’s First Presbyterian (Old Whalers’) Church for two years, returned home in a procession in May 2023, carrying each of the temple’s four Torahs, including one presented to the congregation by Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and another restored through the Memorial Scrolls Trust. The project reached full completion in 2025.

Why SIP Construction Mattered for This Renovation

The congregation itself set the direction: “Environmental stewardship is an important aspect of the Jewish faith, so they wanted a building that would be very energy efficient.” That, combined with a large, complex scope, made panelized construction the right fit for a building that needed to add a basement level, improve accessibility, update its interiors, and expand its footprint, all while keeping its original identity intact.

That kind of performance isn’t a design preference. It’s physics. A stick-framed wall has a stud every 16 or 24 inches, and every one of those studs is a thermal bridge, a path for heat to escape in winter and slip back in come summer. A SIP wall replaces that whole assembly with a single, continuous layer of rigid foam insulation bonded between two structural facings. No studs breaking the insulation. No gaps at the seams for air to leak through. The result is a building envelope that holds its temperature instead of constantly fighting to recover it, which means the HVAC system works less, the electric bill runs lower, and the space inside stays steadier, warmer in January, cooler in July, without a furnace or air handler running overtime to keep up. On a building built in the 1890s, long before anyone engineered for airtightness at all, that’s not an incremental upgrade. It’s a different building envelope entirely.

That performance is also where the environmental benefit actually lives. Heating and cooling is what burns most of a building’s operating energy year after year, and that energy carries a carbon cost, whether it comes off the electric grid or out of a furnace. A continuously insulated, low-leakage SIP envelope needs meaningfully less of that energy to hold the same temperature a stick-framed wall would need far more energy to hold. Less energy burned means less carbon produced to keep the sanctuary warm on a February morning or cool during an August service, every single year the building stands. For a congregation that told its architect this mattered as a matter of faith and not a talking point, that reduction is exactly the kind of concrete, measurable outcome the building itself now delivers, year after year it’s in use.

The building’s design also created a real engineering puzzle: three different wall thicknesses and two different roof thicknesses, each suited to a different part of the structure.

Wall panels: 4 5/8″ (3 3/4″ EPS core, R16), 6 1/2″ (5 5/8″ EPS core, R24), 8 1/4″ (7 3/8″ EPS core, R32)

Roof panels: 8 1/4″ (7 3/8″ EPS core, R32), 10 1/4″ (9 3/8″ EPS core, R40)

Three key benefits stood out on this project:

Installation speed: ACME’s jumbo roof and wall panels cut down the number of individual panels installed, which cuts down the number of seams, which cuts down the time and complexity of getting the building closed in.

Energy efficiency: SIPs gave the addition an extremely well insulated, tight envelope, reducing the load on the HVAC system and the building’s electricity use. That’s a real upgrade over a structure built in the late 1800s, long before anyone was thinking about a building envelope at all.

Precut precision: The panels arrived from ACME’s factory already cut to spec, including the intricate circular and domed window openings the design called for. Cutting those shapes on site, in a historic building under a tight schedule, would have cost real time. This project didn’t have to spend it.

Using three wall thicknesses and two roof thicknesses across one building would have been a genuinely complicated job with stick framing and field-installed insulation, matching different framing depths and insulation types by hand, room by room. SIPs simplified it: each thickness and R-value was built into the panel at the factory, so the variation was handled before the panels ever reached the job site.

Between the tighter envelope, the faster installation, and the precut precision, SIPs gave this project the modern building performance the congregation asked for, without disturbing the historic character it was just as determined to keep. That’s a building that asks less of the land it has stood on since 1898, and less of the congregation that will keep heating, cooling, and maintaining it, for however many generations gather there next.

Recognition

2026 SIPA Building Excellence Awards Runner-Up Classic, Renovations category. The Structural Insulated Panel Association recognized the project for design and structural engineering innovation, creative use of SIP construction, and environmental sustainability, judged against projects across the country.

Project Details

Location	Sag Harbor, NY
Building	Temple Adas Israel, built 1898, oldest synagogue on Long Island
Architect	Chaleff & Rogers, Water Mill, NY (Bill Chaleff)
Builder	RLW4 Builders LLC, Southampton, NY (Roy "Buddy" Wines IV)
SIP Supplier	ACME Panel
Construction	Began 2021; congregation returned May 2023; project completed 2025
Total Project Cost	$7.3 million
SIP Walls	4 5/8" R16, 6 1/2" R24, and 8 1/4" R32 EPS core panels
SIP Roof	8 1/4" R32 and 10 1/4" R40 EPS core panels
Recognition	Runner-Up Classic, Renovations, 2026 SIPA Building Excellence Awards

Renovating a building people care about?

Historic buildings, additions, and architecturally sensitive renovations all bring their own constraints. We will tell you plainly whether SIPs are a fit for yours before you commit to anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can SIPs be used to renovate a historic building?

Yes. Structural insulated panels can be manufactured to match the exact dimensions, openings, and detailing a historic renovation requires, including custom shapes like the circular and domed window openings used in the Temple Adas Israel project. Because panels are precut at the factory, complex historic details can be built into the panel before it ever reaches the site, which reduces the on-site fabrication work that historic renovations usually require.

Can a single project use SIPs of different thicknesses?

Yes. Different parts of a building often call for different wall or roof thicknesses depending on structural loads, energy targets, or how a space is used. The Temple Adas Israel project used three wall panel thicknesses (4 5/8″, 6 1/2″, and 8 1/4″) and two roof thicknesses (8 1/4″ and 10 1/4″) across a single building, each manufactured to the R-value the application needed.

Do SIPs work for additions to older buildings?

SIPs are well suited to additions on older structures because the panels arrive from the factory ready to install, which limits the time a historic building’s original structure is exposed during construction. They also let a project add modern energy performance, a tighter envelope with less thermal bridging, without changing the original building’s exterior appearance.

What is a mikvah, and how did the renovation address it?

A mikvah is a ritual bath used in Jewish practice for spiritual purification. Temple Adas Israel’s original mikvah, no longer in active use by the congregation’s Reform practice, was preserved in a glass enclosure in the building’s new basement level as part of the renovation, keeping it visible as part of the synagogue’s history rather than removing it.

Want to Learn More About SIPs?

If this project raised questions about how SIPs work on a renovation or addition, these resources are worth reading next.

→ SIP Building Basics: A plain-language overview of how SIP construction works and how it compares to conventional framing.

→ When to Use SIPs: Not every project is the right fit for SIP construction. This page walks through the building types, budgets, and timelines where SIPs perform best.

→ Sustainability & Carbon Savings: How a tighter, better-insulated envelope translates into lower carbon over the life of a building.

Sources for this profile:

Anne Surchin, “A Complicated Task: The Renovation and Addition to Temple Adas Israel,” 27east.com

Stephen J. Kotz, “Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor Nears End of $7.3 Million Renovation Project,” 27east.com

Stephen J. Kotz, “Sag Harbor’s Temple Adas Israel Celebrates Its Return Home,” 27east.com

RLW4 LLC

Temple Adas Israel

Why Your SIP Home Feels Different in Summer and Winter

August 25, 2026August 20, 2026 by ACME PANEL

Why Your SIP Home Feels Different in Summer and Winter

You know the walk from a summer parking lot to your front door. The kind of August afternoon where the air feels heavy before you reach the porch, where the car door handle is too hot to touch, where you can feel the heat coming up off the driveway through your shoes.

Then you open the door.

In a lot of homes, the relief is temporary. The living room is cooler than outside, but not by much, and within the hour the air conditioner is working hard to catch up, cycling on and off, never quite settling. The room by the west-facing windows stays a few degrees warmer than the rest of the house no matter what the thermostat says.

In a home built with Structural Insulated Panels, or SIPs, homeowners tend to notice something different before they can explain it. The house feels like it has been waiting for you, at roughly the same temperature it was three hours ago when you left for the pool. No hot spot by the windows. No blast of AC trying to catch up. Just the same, comfortable house you left.

That feeling is not an accident, and it is not really about the thermostat. It is about what is inside the walls.

Key Takeaways

→ SIP walls are continuous insulation, not insulation broken up by studs every 16 inches, which eliminates most thermal bridging.

→ In summer, that means fewer hot spots, less AC cycling, and a house that holds its cool air longer after the system shuts off.

→ In winter, it means no cold walls, no drafts near windows and doors, and a heating system that is not fighting constant heat loss.

→ Lower energy bills follow from the same mechanism: the house does less work, so the HVAC system runs less.

→ SIP walls also block significantly more sound than stick-frame walls, a difference most homeowners notice before they notice anything about temperature.

What's Actually Happening Inside the Walls

Every wall in a home has one job: keep the temperature you want inside, and the temperature you do not want outside. How well it does that job comes down to how continuous the insulation is.

In a standard stick-frame wall, insulation sits between studs, but the studs themselves are wood, spaced every 16 or 24 inches, running straight from the outside of your house to the inside. Wood transfers heat far more easily than insulation does. Each stud becomes a small path for heat to travel through, in summer and in winter. Builders call this thermal bridging: a point in the wall where heat crosses through the structure instead of being stopped by the insulation. Framing takes up a meaningful share of a typical wall’s surface area, which means a meaningful share of that wall is quietly working against the insulation, not with it.

A SIP wall does not have that problem, because it is not built the same way. A structural insulated panel is a solid core of foam insulation sandwiched between two structural facings, manufactured as one continuous piece. There is no stud every 16 inches breaking up the insulation. The wall is the insulation, edge to edge.

Think of two coolers. One is a solid block of foam, thick and continuous on every side. The other has the same foam, but with narrow metal strips running through it every few inches, from the outside straight through to the inside. Both look similar from across the room. Only one of them is actually going to keep your ice from melting on a hot afternoon. That is the difference between a SIP wall and a stick-frame wall, and it is why the two houses feel so different to stand inside.

Here is what that difference actually looks like, room by room and season by season:

Stick-Frame vs. SIP: What You'll Notice

What you notice	Stick-frame home	SIP home
Rooms near west-facing windows in summer	Noticeably warmer by afternoon	Stays close to the rest of the house
Air conditioner behavior	Cycles on and off frequently	Runs steadier, holds cool air after shutoff
Exterior walls in January	Cold to the touch	Close to room temperature
Floors near outside walls in winter	Noticeably colder	Close to room temperature
Outside noise (traffic, lawnmowers, wind)	Passes through clearly	Noticeably dampened
Humidity in summer (Southeast climates)	Sticky even with the AC running	Drier, more controlled

What Summer Feels Like in a SIP Home

The most obvious thing homeowners notice in a SIP home is what does not happen. The house does not develop hot spots. The upstairs bedroom is not five degrees warmer than the living room by mid-afternoon. The room next to the west-facing windows does not turn into the room nobody wants to sit in after 3 p.m.

Because the envelope is airtight and continuously insulated, outside heat has a much harder time working its way in, room by room, than it does in a stick-frame home. The temperature in the kitchen stays close to the temperature down the hall in the bedroom, at any hour of the day. That is a small thing on paper. In practice, it is the difference between a house where everyone agrees on the thermostat and a house where someone is always too hot, reaching for a fan, or too cold, reaching for a sweater.

That consistency changes how the air conditioner behaves. Instead of racing to catch up every time the sun hits one side of the house, the system settles into a steadier rhythm: it runs, brings the house to temperature, and shuts off, without the constant short cycling a leakier envelope demands. And when the system does shut off, the house holds onto that cool air. Homeowners moving from stick-frame homes into SIP homes are often the ones who notice this first: the air conditioner turns off, and the house stays comfortable for hours, not minutes.

In the Southeast specifically, there is a second piece of this that matters just as much as temperature: humidity. A tight, well-sealed envelope gives your HVAC system the control it needs to actually manage moisture in the air, instead of fighting a house that keeps pulling in humid outside air through gaps and seams. That control is a real part of why a SIP home does not just feel cooler in summer. It feels drier, and less sticky, in a way a thermostat reading alone will not tell you.

What Winter Feels Like in a SIP Home

Walk toward an exterior wall in a lot of homes on a January morning, and you can feel the cold coming off it before you touch it. Stand near a window or an exterior door, and there is often a faint draft, even with everything shut tight. Step out of bed onto the floor near an outside wall, and it is noticeably colder than the floor in the center of the room.

None of that happens the same way in a SIP home. Because the walls are continuously insulated and the panel seams are sealed tight during construction, there is no gap for cold air to sneak through and no thermal bridge carrying outside cold straight to the interior wall surface. Exterior walls stay close to room temperature. Floors near the perimeter of the house stay close to room temperature, which matters more than it sounds like it should. It is the difference between kids who will actually sit on the floor to play and kids who will not, because the floor by the window is too cold to sit on. Windows and doors, installed and sealed correctly, do not become a source of draft either.

The heating system notices the difference even if you do not think about it directly. A tighter, better-insulated envelope means the furnace or heat pump is not working all night to replace heat that is leaking out through the walls. It runs less, because the house is not losing the heat it already made. That is the unglamorous mechanism behind why SIP homeowners tend to see lower heating bills: not a gadget, not a trick, just a house that does not need to be reheated every few hours because it was never really losing its heat in the first place.

Even in the cold months, my 3,000-square-foot home stays warm without needing to use my gas fireplace, and my heating costs have remained surprisingly low. After three days without power due to a winter storm, with temperatures ranging from 20 to 30 degrees, my SIP-built home never dropped below 67 degrees inside.

– ACME Panel Homeowner

What This Means for Your Energy Bills

There is no single percentage that applies to every SIP home. Savings depend on your climate, your home’s size and layout, your HVAC system, and how you live in the house.

What we can tell you plainly is the mechanism. A SIP home does less work to hold the temperature you set. Less heat escapes in winter. Less heat gets in during summer. Because the envelope is doing more of that work on its own, your HVAC system does not have to run as hard, or as often, to make up the difference. Less running time is where the savings come from. It is not a marketing claim. It is what happens when you remove the thermal bridging and air leaks that most homes are quietly losing energy through, every hour of every day.

For a closer look at how the upfront cost stacks up against long-term energy savings, see our Economics of SIPs page.

The One Thing That Surprises Most Homeowners

Ask ACME homeowners what surprised them most after moving in, and temperature is not always the first answer. Often, it is quiet.

A SIP wall is a solid, continuous panel, not a cavity with gaps between studs. The same construction that stops heat from moving through the wall also does a far better job of stopping sound. Traffic noise, a neighbor’s lawnmower, wind against the siding, a car door closing down the street: all of it comes through noticeably softer in a SIP home than in a comparable stick-frame home.

Homeowners do not usually go into a SIP build expecting this. They are thinking about energy bills and comfort. Then they move in, and the first thing they mention to a friend is how quiet the house is when the doors are shut and the world is happening outside. A nursery on the street side of the house that does not pick up every passing car. A home office where a video call does not compete with the neighborhood. It is a small thing to describe and a significant thing to live inside.

Is This What You're Building Toward?

Underneath all of this is a simple idea: a house should not work against the people living in it. It should not have a room everyone avoids in the afternoon. It should not have a floor that makes you flinch in January. It should not require you to think about the thermostat every time the weather changes outside.

That is not just a technical outcome. It is a family outcome. It is the difference between a house you manage and a house that quietly takes care of you, season after season, year after year. If you are planning a build and you want a home that feels as good as the numbers say it should, that feeling is not an accident. It comes from how the walls are built, long before you ever move in.

ACME Panel manufactures SIPs in a solar-powered facility in Radford, Virginia, and we have spent years helping homeowners and builders across the region get this right, from the first conversation to the final panel. If you are still in the research phase and want to talk through what a SIP home would actually feel like for your family, in your climate, on your lot, we are glad to talk it through with you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do SIP homes feel more comfortable than stick-frame homes?

SIP walls are built as one continuous panel of foam insulation, without the wood studs that break up insulation in a stick-frame wall. Those studs act as thermal bridges, letting heat move through the wall in summer and winter alike. Without them, a SIP home keeps a more even temperature from room to room and asks less of the HVAC system to maintain it.

Do SIP homes stay cooler in summer without running the air conditioner constantly?

Yes. Because the building envelope is airtight and continuously insulated, outside heat has a harder time working its way into a SIP home. The air conditioner cycles less often, and the house holds onto cool air longer after the system shuts off, compared to a stick-frame home of the same size.

Are SIP homes warmer in winter for the same reason?

Yes. The same continuous insulation and sealed panel seams that keep summer heat out also keep winter heat in. Exterior walls stay close to room temperature, floors near the perimeter of the house do not feel cold, and the heating system does not have to run as often to replace heat that would otherwise leak out.

Do SIP homes actually block more outside noise?

They do. A solid SIP wall does not have the open cavities and gaps that a stick-frame wall has, and that same construction reduces how much sound passes through. Homeowners in SIP homes often notice less traffic noise and quieter rooms overall, even before they think about energy performance.

How does a SIP home handle humidity in a hot, humid climate like the Southeast?

A tight, well-sealed SIP envelope gives your HVAC system real control over the air inside your home, instead of constantly fighting humid air pulling in through gaps and seams. That control is a meaningful part of why SIP homes in humid climates tend to feel drier and less sticky than stick-frame homes at the same thermostat setting.

Will building with SIPs lower my energy bills?

It should, though the exact amount depends on your climate, your home’s design, and your HVAC system. What is consistent is the mechanism: a SIP home loses less heat in winter and gains less heat in summer, so the HVAC system runs less to hold the temperature you want. For a snapshot of the numbers, see our Economics of SIPs page.

Want to Go Deeper?

If this article has you thinking about what a SIP build would actually involve, these resources are worth reading next.

→ SIP Building Basics: a plain-language overview of how SIP construction works and how it compares to conventional framing.

→ Economics of SIPs: the full financial snapshot, including how the upfront investment in SIPs compares to lifetime energy costs.

→ SIP Dos and Don’ts: the practical guide to getting SIP construction right, including the moisture and air-sealing details that make the comfort described here possible.

Ready to talk through your project?

If you're planning a build and want to know what a SIP home will actually feel like for your family, in your climate, on your lot, we're glad to walk through it with you.

Mountain SIP House: A Multi-Generational Home Built for the Long Haul in Riner, VA

August 25, 2026August 18, 2026 by ACME PANEL

completed exterior of a custom home in Virginia built with SIPs

Mountain SIP House: A Multi-Generational Home Built for the Long Haul in Riner, VA

A family wanted out of the suburbs. They wanted land big enough to farm, mountain views, and a home that could hold two generations under one roof without anyone feeling like a guest. What they built in Riner, Virginia, is a home where the downstairs belongs to the younger family and the upstairs belongs to the parents, under a single vaulted roofline that spans 22 feet with no trusses. When it was tested at the end of construction, the blower door came back at 0.69 ACH50, a result that puts this home within reach of Passive House-level airtightness.

This is what happens when a family builds for the long haul instead of the next five years.

Project Highlights

→ 0.69 ACH50 blower door result, well inside the range that defines an exceptionally tight building envelope, which means lower energy use, lower utility bills, and lower carbon emissions over the life of the house

→ Continuous SIP insulation across the walls and roof, with no stud-cavity gaps to sap efficiency the

way stick-frame construction does

→ 22-foot roof panels spanning the full width of the home with no trusses required

→ Multi-generational layout: full downstairs for the younger family, upstairs reserved for parents

and shared gathering space

→ Geothermal HVAC paired with a heat pump water heater

→ Designed and built by Taylor Hollow Construction, ACME’s sister company

→ 2025 SIPA Building Excellence Award, Classic Winner

What is ACH50, and why does 0.69 matter? ACH50 measures how many times the air inside a home would fully turn over in an hour if the house were pressurized to 50 pascals during a blower door test. Lower means tighter. Virginia’s building code requires new homes to test at 3 ACH50 or better. This home tested at 0.69, roughly four times tighter than code requires, and close to the 0.6 ACH50 mark that defines Passive House-level airtightness, the strictest widely used residential efficiency standard. In practice, that means the furnace and geothermal system aren’t fighting drafts, and the mountain wind that would find every gap in a looser envelope has almost nothing to work with here.

The Project

The homeowners were after a specific kind of life: a working plot of land in the mountains, room for the whole family, and a home that would not bleed money in energy costs while they built that life. The design solved for both generations at once. The entire downstairs went to the younger family members. Upstairs held the parents’ quarters and the spaces where everyone gathers. It is one roofline doing two jobs.

Taylor Hollow Construction, ACME’s sister company, served as both builder and design professional on this project, with structural engineering from Pinnacle Engineering, Inc. Taylor Hollow does not theorize about what SIPs can do. They build with them, on their own projects and on client projects like this one, which is exactly why they know where SIP construction earns its keep and where it does not.

The above-grade walls went up entirely in structural insulated panels: 6.5 inches total thickness with a 5 5/8-inch EPS core. The roof used 10.25-inch panels with a 9 3/8-inch EPS core, precut and routed at ACME’s Radford facility before they ever reached the job site.

"Even in the cold months, my 3,000-square-foot home stays warm without needing to use my gas fireplace, and my heating costs have remained surprisingly low."

-Homeowner

What SIPs Actually Delivered on This Build

Three things mattered here, and none of them were marketing claims. They were outcomes.

Faster construction. The 22-foot roof panels spanned the full width of the home without a single truss. That is not a minor detail. Trusses take time to install and add another trade to coordinate. Eliminating them shortened the build schedule and gave the design a vaulted ceiling that a truss system would have made far harder to achieve.

A genuinely tight envelope. The blower door test came back at 0.69 ACH50. For reference, a leaky older home can test above 10 ACH50, and a code-minimum new build often lands somewhere between 3 and 7. A 0.69 result means almost no uncontrolled air movement in or out of the house, which is the difference between a furnace that runs constantly and one that barely has to work. That number is not an estimate. It is a measured result from a test performed on the finished home.

Lower cost through prefabrication, not lower quality. ACME’s precut and routed panels arrived as part of a Ready-to-Assemble package that included precut lumber, rim board, and glulams. That kind of prefabrication cuts on-site labor and material waste, and it is one reason SIP construction can compete with stick frame on total project cost, even though the panels themselves cost more upfront. We break down that math on our Economics of SIPs page.

The Engineering Behind the Vaulted Ceiling

The 22-foot roof panels are the detail worth lingering on. SIP roof panels carry structural load across their whole span, not just at the points where a truss would bear weight. That structural capacity is what let Taylor Hollow eliminate trusses and open up a vaulted ceiling that would otherwise have required a redesigned framing plan and a bigger labor bill.

The roof panels were also extended past the top plates of the walls to create the home’s overhangs, built into the same panel instead of framed separately afterward. That single move did two things at once: it gave the home the shade and weather protection that keeps a building envelope performing well through Virginia summers, and it removed a framing step that would normally have added time on site.

See how SIP roof spans and design flexibility work on our Designing with SIPs page.

Manufactured at a Solar-Powered Facility in Virginia

Every panel on this home came out of ACME’s solar-powered facility in Radford, VA. Panel waste from manufacturing gets recycled and reused in other industries rather than landfilled. That means lower carbon before the panel ever gets installed, and then a home that uses meaningfully less energy to heat and cool for the rest of its life once it is. For a family building a home meant to hold two generations now and however many come after, that is not a footnote. A home that uses less energy every year produces less carbon every year, for as long as this family lives in it.

Recognition

2025 SIPA Building Excellence Award, Classic Winner. Awarded by the Structural Insulated Panel Association, recognizing residential SIP projects for design, performance, and construction quality. The Mountain SIP House was recognized in the Classic category for homes over 3,000 square feet.

Project Details

Location	Riner, VA
Builder & Design Professional	Taylor Hollow Construction
Structural Engineer	Pinnacle Engineering, Inc.
SIP Supplier	ACME Panel
Year Built	2024
Project Type	Residential, over 3,000 sq. ft.
SIP Walls	6.5" total thickness, 5 5/8" EPS core
SIP Roof	10.25" total thickness, 9 3/8" EPS core
Blower Door Test	0.69 ACH50
HVAC	Geothermal system with heat pump water heater
Award	2025 SIPA Building Excellence Award, Classic Winner

Planning a custom home that needs to work for more than one generation?

Talk to us about what a SIP building envelope can do for your layout, your timeline, and your energy bills. Or start with our Designing with SIPs page to see what's possible before your plans are locked in.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a 0.69 ACH50 blower door result actually mean?

ACH50 measures how many times the air in a home is fully replaced per hour when the house is pressurized to 50 pascals during a blower door test. Lower is tighter. A leaky older home can test above 10 ACH50. A typical code-built new home often falls between 3 and 7. A result of 0.69 means the home has almost no uncontrolled air leakage, which translates directly into lower heating and cooling costs and a more consistent indoor temperature.

Can SIP roof panels really eliminate the need for trusses?

Yes, within span limits that depend on panel thickness and engineering. On the Mountain SIP House in Riner, VA, 10.25-inch SIP roof panels spanned 22 feet with no trusses required, which also allowed for a vaulted ceiling design. Structural insulated panels carry load across their full surface rather than at discrete truss points, which is what makes long clear spans possible. See more on our Designing with SIPs page.

Are SIPs a good fit for multi-generational homes?

SIPs work well for multi-generational layouts because the building envelope performance is consistent throughout the structure, whether the home has one shared HVAC zone or several. The Mountain SIP House used a single geothermal system to condition both the downstairs living area for the younger family and the upstairs quarters for the parents, with the airtight envelope helping the system run efficiently across the whole home rather than working harder in one zone than another.

Where is ACME Panel’s SIP manufacturing facility?

ACME Panel manufactures SIPs at its facility in Radford, Virginia, powered by 360 solar panels. Panel waste from manufacturing is recycled and reused in other industries. ACME serves builders and homeowners across the eastern United States with free shipping within 300 miles of Radford.

Want to Learn More About SIPs?

→ Economics of SIPs: What SIPs actually cost upfront, where the savings show up, and how the math works over the life of a home.

→ Designing with SIPs: How SIP construction changes what’s possible in a floor plan, including long roof spans and vaulted ceilings like this one.

→ Sustainability & Carbon Savings: The physics behind why a SIP home produces less carbon over its lifetime, and how ACME’s manufacturing fits into that.