Consider energy usage and total cost of ownership. In New Zealand we see the trend of larger homes, with less occupants, and energy costs doubling over the past 13 years. 40% of a home’s energy consumption is related to heating and cooling.

With drastically reduced heating and cooling requirements in a Formance™ house you’re set for ongoing energy savings from the moment you move in. Traditional methods of insulating your home deteriorate over time, and are subject to variation in installation meaning laboratory values for their insulation properties are highly unlikely to be achieved during a real build, and will reduce over time. Not so with Formance™. Using Formance™ removes the possibility of variation in installation of insulation and maintains it’s super-high insulation performance year after year.

Experience high levels of comfort and health with controlled ventilation. The high airtightness of a Formance™ home allows unprecedented control over the inside environment, meaning a reduction in allergens and airborne pollutants. Your home should not just be a place to seek shelter, it should enhance your life, your lifestyle and ensure the health of your family is not compromised by unhealthy living conditions. Formance™ homes set new standards.

SIPs are incredibly strong, effectively providing double bracing capacity to the wall. Beside bracing, Formance™ SIPs have huge impact resistance both inside and out, and because they’re nailed and bonded at the joints they will be creak-free forever. Houses that get noisier over time through movement in wall and roof connections are a thing of the past; post-build structure degradation simply does not happen with a Formance™ SIP building.

This strength is even more valuable in the New Zealand environment where we are subject to earthquakes. Formance SIPs have two key attributes that really stand out when discussing how they stand up to earthquakes; they have huge strength and they have great ductility.

So not only do they withstand the applied force of an earthquake really really well but they have a unique ability to take the shock out of the movement by allowing some non-permanent flex in the stucture. Engineers call this ductility – the ability of a material (such as a metal or asphalt cement) to undergo permanent deformation through elongation (reduction in cross-sectional area) or bending at room temperature without fracturing.

More rigid and brittle materials like concrete tend to fail abruptly without warning and once gone they require extensive remediation or replacement. The engineers measure resistance to earthquake movement in Bracing Units and have other more technical terms for it but for the rest of us it simply means they can withstand severe earthquakes and keep us safe inside.