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Scott is our Timber Engineering Manger. He joined Carpenter Oak & Woodland in 2004 primarily because of his love of working with wood, and having managed both our framing yards, he took up the challenge of developing our rapidly growing Timber Engineering business in 2006. Scott, (being much older than he actualy looks!) has many years experience in the construction industry as a Quantity Surveyor and Contracts Manager, and brings us a great depth of knowledge from having managed a number of different construction businesses.
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The publicity that our traditional framing gets (on TV and in numerous self build and lifestyle magazines) tends to overwhelm our timber engineering projects. Although we do many more traditional frames the engineered timber projects are often very high profile and of significantly greater value, but they don't make such great TV and publicity tends to be confined to the trade publications.
Despite this I am regularly asked by engineers and architects we work in partnership with to explain when and why we use engineered timbers instead of the green natural timber we use so extensively in traditional framing.
In response I've put together a quick fact sheet (pdf 1.14mb) on glulam. I hope it's helpful and if you have any other questions about the use of engineered timbers you can contact me on 01225 743089 or drop me an email.
The staggering size of some glue laminated beams!
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In my blog about the In Touch with Timber conference recently, I touched on the building of large timber framed supermarkets. I assumed that retail giants like Tesco and Sainsbury were motivated by profit and nothing else in a very competitive market, so it pricked my interest that timber space frames are now more financially attractive than steel to the commercial sector, as is so often the case in continental Europe. Could this be the kick start for a major expansion of the timber engineering industry in the UK?
First and foremost it appears, getting people into the supermarket is the primary objective of the retail sector. Once people are in they spend. Everything the supermarkets do is customer led. Environmental or "green" issues are very fashionable. People feel good about helping the environment and want to be green, and look favourably on companies that are also trying to be green. So the supermarkets are now competing with each other to be greenest. Tesco announced plans to spend £100m on research into wind, solar and geothermal power, twice as much as Gordon Brown promised in the last budget. Interesting that Mark Soutar, Head of Environmental Construction for Tesco said that they got more publicity by sticking two little wind turbines on the roof of one of their stores which only powered the signage than any of their other environmental measures.
Anyway back to the engineered timber building. Apparently, with the massive rise in steel prices closing the gap, it is still more expensive to build in timber. So why is timber more attractive to large retailers? The timber trade says:
All of which are true of course, but the supermarkets say:
I say:
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The annual conference in London hosted by Trada (Timber Research and Development Association) brings together lots of building professionals with a common interest in timber construction from across the UK and Europe. Delegate numbers were up on last year showing that even in a recession we are all very positive about the future. The focus of the conference was on design, distinguishing between design Architecturally and structurally.
Our first speaker Simon Smith, a structural engineer, took us through a number of interesting projects, mainly focussing on educational buildings. Interesting was the combination of structural timber frame (glulam) with concrete floors for lightness of structure and thermal mass. In the early days, standard hollowrib steel deck permanent shuttering for the concrete floors was simply supported on the frame. However research with Cambridge University has moved on timber / concrete floor design so that the composite action of sheer studs directly fixed to the timber integrating the two materials, has resulted in reduced timber dimensions and slab thicknesses, producing economies for the timber design. Simon's message to the UK construction industry "buy more German Technology with Scandanavian thinking".
Mark Soutar, until very recently "head of environmental construction" for Tesco, explained what I'd heard in the press about the supermarkets building in timber. The supermarket giants are all battling with each other to be greenest. Everything they do is customer led, and they've discovered that customers feel good about and want to be greener, and look to companies to set the example. Building in timber is more expensive, but top of Mark's list for reasons to build in timber is services. Supermarkets are designed and built around the services, and holes and fixing service runs are greatly simplified and much quicker in a timber building. However the value of the Euro has now priced timber (temporarily we hope) out of the market for Tesco.
Alison Brookes, an Architect, spent most of her presentation recalling her days of steel frame construction and use of tropical hardwoods to produce complicated shapes in her designs which gave no shelter to the exposed external timber finishes. I must admit to wondering for a long time why she had been invited to speak at a timber conference until rather near the end of her presentation she seemed to get to the point. She explained that she was forced by client economics on a large speculative private housing development into using timber panel construction instead of steel with a light timber infill, and as an alternative to endangered tropical hardwoods, treated stained Siberian larch. These new materials could do everything she wanted artistically producing a much quicker site build at a fraction of the price! Alison was the project Architect with Feilden Clegg who designed the award winning Accordia site in Cambridge that Cowco have been heavily involved with.
Michael Keller, a structural engineer and timber consultant from Germany, spending many years with Finnforest Merk, brought some fascinating European timber projects to our attention, the most interesting of which to me was the Centre Pompidou - Metz, an impossibly shaped glulam gridshell costing euro 6M to cover a 8000m2 space. Michael's message to the UK - get in the euro and start producing your own glulam and cross laminated panels. Tesco he reminded us, because of the currency fluctuations have reverted back to building supermarkets from steel (which is probably why Mark has moved on).
Hugh Mansfield-Williams, Technical Manager for Trada, gave us a clear succinct pathway through the new Eurocodes, explaining that it was a phenomenal piece of work presenting a common basis for structural design throughout Europe amalgamating a mind boggling amount of legislation into a single document.
I'm sorry to say that due to another work appointment I missed Richard Harris' talk, as Richard, Technical Director of Buro Happold, is one of the UK's very own timber structural engineering gods!
The message I took from the conference is Britain historically way behind Europe and Scandinavia in building in heavy timber frame, is catching up with the schools (public) and supermarkets (private) initiatives, but has been recently temporarily wrong footed by the strength of the Euro, because we don't yet have our own indigenous engineered timber production. With the uncertainty in recent years about the world price of steel, engineered timber was seen for a while to be a very credible alternative. Pity our government didn't take the Olympic opportunity to champion the uk industry!
However I'm sure it is only a hiccup.
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The Roman Architect Vitruvus in his Ten Books of Architecture (circa 25BC), the oldest known text on the subject, defines the essence of architecture as a synthesis of "utilas, firmistas and venustas", variously translated as firmness, commodity and delight (Sir Henry Wotton 1624) and strength, function and beauty. For Vitruvius, architecture requires balance between intellectual and manual, between theoretical and practical, between design and construction. John Da Silva of Polhemius Savery DaSilva Architects Builders makes the point about traditional Architect and Contractor relationships where one can profit by proving the other wrong are rife with mistrust and contentiousness. Designing and making allows the integration of theory and craft providing the best chance at approaching Vitrivius?s balance.*
I liken John?s words to the business practices of our own organisation. We are passionate about serving our Clients through the understanding of their needs, with integration into the design team at the earliest stage of the project concept. This approach to construction removes entirely the potential opportunity to profit from the errors or omissions conveyed by a set of rushed incomplete drawings, further exacerbated by a rather pathetic attempt at descriptive text made up by inexperienced college graduates. When the specialist contractor knows more about the construction than the project procurement team, that knowledge is the power to profit.
I recently was advised by a dishonest procurement practitioner that if our company provided the information from which he could put together a meaningful contractual document, we would be "nominated" to carry out the works. Alarm bells rung, as we had no knowledge of this practitioner and he had no experience of working with us and, by complete chance, we learned that he had made the same promise to two other specialists. How did he ever think that this dishonest approach would ever produce a successful project?
* Architecture of the Cape Cod Summer by Michael J Crosbie
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I don?t know about you, but I absolutely hate spending my precious free time hacking out rotten wood, scraping peeling paint, and trying to preserve my biggest ever investment. Any time I see fancy painted wood fascias I don?t think that looks nice, I think I?d hate to own that house.
I?m still reading Stuart Brand?s book "How Buildings Work" which kinda sums the issue up for me:
?As for wood, redolent with tradition, it is the best of materials from the standpoint of adaptability and one of the worst in terms of maintenance. It is fairly cheap, made of a renewable resource, easy to work, and it can be extortionately beautiful. But it wants to absorb moisture, and wherever the water content gets over 21 per cent, the wood turns into habitat and food for fungus, termites, ants, beetles, bees, borers and other wildlife. "What holds up that house?" one cynical carpenter asked me rhetorically, gesturing at a nearby standard stick build home. "Faith, habit, and the dead bodies of termites, same as all the houses around here." Who builds in wood builds a shack, adaptable now, gone soon.
The exception is timber framed buildings, because the wood structure is protected from the weather, it is massive, and it is exposed. Air and eyeballs can get at it to keep it dry and inspected. "According to government statistics," reports Gene Logsdon, "the average life of a conventionally built stud house is about 75 years. The life of a timber frame house is at least 300 years, and some over 1000 years survive."
The principals for longevity are very simple:
1. design, design, design - the best Architects understand the materials they are using
2. material selection - fast grown softwood is a very cheap building material, but not in the long term
3. whatever you use, keeping it dry or allowing it to dry out easily is the key
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