Andy Parker

Andy joined Carpenter Oak & Woodland in 2005, to help the company provide a greater focus on customer service, marketing and sales. Andy’s background is varied indeed – helping him to bring a wide range of skills to the team. An avid lover of carpentry, Andy has also spent time in furniture restoration and conservation – something he still enjoys as a hobby.

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Previous posts

• Directory of Oak Frame Architects
• Whisky brings warmth to timber framed homes
• Timber Supply for Oak Frame Houses
• Timber frame for supermarkets
• The quandary of externally exposed oak frames

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By Andy Parker

Most of us these days have a greater awareness of our impact on the environment and at the very least are conscious of the need to reduce it even if we don’t always feel able to. For this reason we are often asked where the timber for our oak framed houses comes from and if the source is sustainable. The other question that comes along with this is if we use English oak in our frames and what are the largest sizes we can get.

At one of our CPD seminars recently (these are seminars we run for industry professionals who have to demonstrate that they keep their knowledge up to date so that they can retain their membership of their professional bodies) these very same questions were raised.

I was speaking at the seminar at the time and one of the delegates; a timber miller in the UK, kindly suggested he show us some photographs of a parcel of forest he had recently been to see in France.

At 32 metres to the first fork this oak demonstrates the excellent construction grade timber available to the oak framing industry

I’ve often explained at these seminars that there is a world of difference between managed oak trees in France and the oak trees we see in Great Britain. We stopped managing oak forest several hundred years ago but in France the practice continued. Oak sourced from the UK is from mixed forestation, limited in size and often of dubious construction quality (however it often has some wonderful characteristics for furniture making, turned bowls and so on). However the same species of oak (quercus robur) in France grows tall, straight and with good construction characteristics.

This is a typical example of a managed oak forest in France and a great source of material for our oak framed houses

Hence a lot of the timber for the oak framing industry does, out of necessity, come from France. If you are concerned about the sustainability and impact on the environment bear in mind that the net stock of forest in Europe is increasing year on year and although it would be ideal to source the oak more locally even coming from France, the use of timber in construction is still significantly better than the energy consumed in using concrete or steel.