external render

cue

I am new to all this (house construction, and the internet) and am amazed by all the experience available here. Fair play to yis all. At the moment we are talking to a company who construct timber frame houses with a closed panel method and they offer an external sto render which gives a u-value of 0.17 and helps the house to breathe. My concern is that this finish may not be suitable for a climate with wind driven rain. Any ideas?

foamcutter

Cue,

closed panel method

I'm not sure what this method is but if it is external insulation system the list of companies below also supply this type of system and coloured renders. It maybe useful to get more information.

Facade systems from Dublin are agents for the weber range of renders
facades

Qmax finishes from Rathcoole are agents for the Parex range of renders. www.parex.com qmaxfinishes

Greenspan from Limerick are agents for the Dryvit range of renders. www.dryvit.com greenspan

cue

Thanks for those links. My understanding of a closed panel production system is one where the complete building is manufactured in a factory with all the doors windows insulation and services cavity etc already installed. This is then delivered to site,erected and finished. I think it is a mineral render which is then applied externally to a mesh to finish it. Apparently Homebond will not insure (?) this finish because of their fears of wind driven rain getting behind the render, but a company called Premier will cover it. As I said this is all new to me so I am eager to find out if there is a danger with this method

Viking House

We have been using those plasters for the last three years from sto, drywit, alsecco and some others.
They are excellent plasters and have been used for the last 40 years in parts of the world where the climate (wind, rainfall, snow, ice, +- 30 degrees in one day) is a lot worse than in Ireland.
We are presently using fibreglass-mesh supported breathable mineral plaster from Alsecco specially designed for granite wool external breathable insulation.


Homebond will not insure anything that is not built from concrete because they have to keep their CRH pals in business.
Premier Guarantee have insured a lot of alternative materials for us all we needed to show them was CE certification, DIN from Germany, FI and SN from Scandinavia.
CE certification superceeds IAG because Ireland have no testing facility.

The Poroton block has an Irish Agreement Cert based on the fact that it is plastered with sto plaster. When you build with Poroton blocks you don't put any morter in the vertical joints so the sto plaster gives it the cert.

There is more info on my website.
www.viking-house.net

foamcutter

Cue,

I would agree with viking,

have been used for the last 40 years in parts of the world where the climate (wind, rainfall, snow, ice, +- 30 degrees in one day) is a lot worse than in Ireland

These renders are used extensively in Europe and the US and are tried and tested. Once the system is applied correctly you shouldn't have any problems. Your render supplier should be able to show you local examples so that you can see for yourself.

Do you have any links for "closed panel production system". it would be interesting to see.

cue

We are talking to a crowd from Germany called Dan Wood House who have an agent here. They provide a turnkey house in 10 weeks which is pretty fast due to all the pre-work done in the factory. www.dan-wood.com. As far as i know Griffner Coillte in Mullingar are another crowd who have started using this process, but they seem more expensive

foamcutter

Cue,

I don't know what stage your at but if you doing more research on different house construction methods it maybe worth visiting The Irish Sustainable Building Show on at the RDS in September, The Building Exhibition runs along side it.
sustainable building show
Thanks for the link, there could be others in the same type of market to Dan Wood. I remember seeing a very stylish house built on "Grand Designs", l think it was called a Huff house. Same idea, prefabricated to a certain spec and quickly assembled on site. The finished house looked well and the attention to detail was remarkable.
grand-designs/huf house

tawa

i have used these products in wellington new zealand for ten years, they are excellent, especially sto. wellington has a higher average rainfall than ireland and generally more extreme weather conditions.they also have to deal with seismic activity, sto and the other products like rockcote and equus withstand earthquakes quite well.