The first floor perimeter is 124' and the walls are 9' high. Nailing the base plate, erecting the 1st floor walls, framing out the larger window rough openings, installing pre-dimensioned and insulated headers (provided by Eco-Panels) and adding a 2nd top plate took us only 4 hours to complete. We ripped down a 2x6 to 4 1/2" to run a second top plate around the perimeter. Eco-Panels integrated cam-lock system, pre-engineered corners and pre-engineered rough opening and headers, made completing the 1st floor wall system a breeze. Not only did using Eco-Panels save us a lot of time, labor and headaches, but I ended up with a wall system that is more than 2X stronger and almost 3x the affective R-Value (R-26) of a conventionally stick framed home.
The exterior skin I used on the Eco-Panels is the ZIP sytem from Huber---www.zipsystem.com---. I originally planned on ordering the Eco-Panels with integrated LP Smartside---www.lpcorp.com--(bypassing the need for additional siding) as the exterior skin. With a form--following--function mindset, one of the biggest challenges for me on this prototype has been taking such a simple rectangular design and giving it some curb appeal. Although I could have saved time and money by going with an integrated vertical (board and batten) siding option on Eco-Panels (like LP Smartside), aesthetically I felt a darker colored horizontal lap siding would end up being a more attractive option on this tall and lean prototype design. We'll see how it turns out!
The 2nd story floor trusses were ready to be set after lunch. We knew ahead of time that having the crane on site for the first few days after the panels were delivered would really speed up the process and get us dried in much quicker. We also used the crane to lift the 2nd floor Advantech subfloor sheets. By the end of the day, we had installed about 1/3 of the Advantech sheets and felt confident we would have the 2nd floor walls panels finished by the end of the next day.
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