Learn More About Eco-Panels
Welcome to our website.
Eco-Panels has been acknowledged by building scientists working for the U.S. Department of Energy as having the most advanced structural insulated panel system on the market today. We have worked with clients – from governments to private citizens – on every continent, from US State Department sanctioned humanitarian relief missions in Asia, to medical clinics in Africa. From high-end private homes to affordable housing or multi-family projects, Eco-Panels can help you realize your dream of building a stronger and significantly more energy-efficient structure, often with lower skilled labor.
Whether you are building a new home for yourself or an important client, we hope that you leave this website enlightened and better informed. We believe that the best consumer is an informed consumer, and we look forward to assisting you as best we can on your journey. We truly believe that through our line of products we can make the world – and your world specifically – a better place for you, your family, and our future together.
Our Company
Eco-Panels was founded by people from the hi-tech (Silicon Valley) and automotive manufacturing industries who realized – after moving to the same neighborhood – that while many builders were putting different spins on being green builders – they were all pretty much doing the same thing. Local builders would market bamboo flooring or countertops with recycled content, or spray foam or natural mineral wool insulation, but the homes were still being built using stud frame construction – a complicated, relatively weak and not energy-efficient method of building homes that dates back almost 200 years (FYI – while “sliced bread” is certainly old, stud-frame construction is twice as old!). With a challenge from a developer to “find a better way”, the pair researched the industry and – leveraging prior work and expertise from both the commercial refrigeration and the construction industries – founded Eco-Panels LLC in Asheville, North Carolina in 2007 with manufacturing operations in Mocksville, North Carolina.
In 2019 Eco-Panels welcomed the addition of a second manufacturing operation through a Manufacturing and Technology License Agreement (MATLA) with the associate company of Honest Abe Log Homes, one of the premiere log home providers in North America. With factory operations located in Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee, Eco-Panels of Tennessee would also be happy to work with you to realize your dreams of a stronger, safer and more energy efficient home. At present, each of our manufacturing operations are operated separately and independently.
International
Eco-Panels has successfully partnered with clients in many countries over the years, including in international disaster response as well as in supporting the hosptality industry or private residences. From time to time, Eco-Panels is supported by ICT Mass Housing Technologies, LLC, focusing on global business development, international project and construction management, marketing, sales, and “turnkey” engineering and design services for Eco-Panel products worldwide.
Our Mission
To provide developers, builders, and future homeowners a simple-to-assemble system allowing almost anyone to create the strongest, safest, and most energy-efficient homes on the planet.
Our patented panels can create the most continuously insulated structural building envelope on the market today. Traditional stud frame construction technology – invented in the 1830s – has long been recognized as complex and not very efficient. In fact in the 1860s the building industry saw that by using larger framing lumber spaced further apart and stacked for structural support, a builder could build homes more efficiently, and today this same technique – now using standardized 2×6 lumber – is known as “advanced frame construction”. While it is by far still the most common method of construction, stud framing – whether using 2×4 or 2×6 lumber – is still recognized as the weakest and least energy-efficient method of construction allowed by law (aka “building code”).
In the 1930s, soon after the invention of sliced bread, the US Forest Service started experimenting with new methods of construction and invented what is known today as a “structural insulated panel”, or “SIP”. The first widely sold SIPs – basically a “sandwich panel” that had two wooden “skins” or siding materials glued on either side of a thick foam board – used expanded polystyrene (or EPS) foam. Polystyrene foam, with an insulation value about the same as fiberglass and which melts (loses structure) at temperatures around 180º F, has never been a compelling replacement for stud frame construction. While many cities across the US are working to ban expanded polystyrene food packaging due to health, safety, and environmental reasons, this material still forms the vast majority of the insulation used by the SIP panel industry in the US and the world today.
Builders traditionally create the skeleton of a house with 2×4 or 2×6 framing and then apply sheathing to the studs for structure, and then apply insulation between studs. Eco-Panels interlocking building panels instead build a home much like a highly efficient Igloo® or Yeti® cooler, creating an almost continuously insulated building envelope where little energy is required for heating and cooling. Our staff works with you to place doors and windows (using door and window panels) and can even embed wiring runs and electrical boxes for outlets or switches to provide both structure and a crazy-energy efficient home. Adopting the best ideas from the refrigeration industry and the latest building materials from the building industry, we have created a revolutionary way to build a stronger and safer structure of superior energy efficiency.
Our product
Truly Green
Eco-Panels only uses the most advanced closed-cell polyurethane foams on the market today. Our highly efficient insulating and structural foam core offers almost twice the R value – or thermal resistance – of expanded polystyrene foam. Using a poly-alcohol base derived from post-process sugar beets, our custom blended foam will never melt, is fire retardant (Class 1) and has post-consumer recycled content (PET). Our foam has a global warming potential (GWP) of less than one, no ozone-depleting potential (ODP), no styrenes, no formaldehyde, no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and no brominated flame retardants (common with EPS foams). In 2019 our foam passed the California Dept. of Public Health’s strictest indoor air quality standards, standard 01350 v1.2 for School Classrooms, Private Offices, or Single Family Residential construction.