Learning from Swedish Home Building Part 4

This video piece is about a house in Rockford Illinois being built by a team of American High School Students and visiting Swedish Vocational School Students. They are building a Swedish wall system using American materials that is very similar to the prototypes laid out in our USA New Wall. The USA New Wall is our recommendation for applying Swedish building techniques to American home building.

The walls in this Rockford house will have approximately R35 worth of insulation in them when done. Two layers of 1.5" stone wool at approximately R6 each, and the main stud space with 5.5" or stone wool at R23. The furred layering on both sides will reduce thermal bridging and improve the averaged R value performance of the wall.

This Project is the result of a unique economic development relationship between Rockford, and Swedish sister city Lidköping. It is being built as an effort of the Swedish American Foundation of the Rockford Swedish American Health System which is engaged in urban renewal in the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital. The Swedish American Foundation sponsors teams of students from the Construction Program at De la Gardiegymnasiet, a trade school from Lidköping. Together with the students from Rockford East High School, and under the coordination of East High School Instructor Matt Walling the house is constructed on a site a few blocks from the hospital.

We have more background on this project here including a detailed analysis of the wall system they are using:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/2012/03/all-about-swedish-standard-house.html
http://blog.lamidesign.com/2012/03/visiting-most-important-green-house-in.html

As recommended for the USA New Wall, the Swedish Standard house shown in this video will use use Stone Wool insulation rather than fiberglass. You can read a detailed article about why we prefer Stone Wool on our blog:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/2012/01/what-you-don-know-about-mineral-wool.html

You can read the entire Letters from Sweden series on our blog which tracks our research and applications of into blog post's into Swedish House building, and its application in the US:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/search/label/letters%20from%20Sweden

The USA New Wall, and Swedish Platform Framing are an outgrowth of our research into Swedish building practices. Again, you can find details of the USA New Wall here:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/usa-new-wall-info.html

And Swedish Platform Framing here:
http://blog.lamidesign.com/p/swedish-platform-framing-info.html

If you need assistance implementing the USA New Wall or Swedish Platform Framing in your projects, we are here to help. Please contact us.