How much insulation.

[SteamyTea]

I seem to remember that the Barratt problem was really a site problem.  The 'builders' were tearing the vapour barrier and not repairing it.

Hard to stop things like that.

 

Down here there is quite a large TF company, the production manager said to me.

"we make them to a 3mm tolerance, then the plumbers come along and drill a fxxxing hole though the wall'.

[Jeremy Harris]

The Barratt problem was largely down to bad design.  They had a design where the sole plate sat on a cold foundation - surprise, surprise, they got interstitial condensation and rot!

 

There was no vapour barrier internally that I could see.  I looked at a bunch of Barratt homes in Helston being "put right", as a former colleague had bought one in the mid-70's.  The bottom half of the ground floor fibreglass insulation was sopping wet, as was the timber.  The sole plate had mushrooms growing on it.....................

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, Declan52 said:

Mass developers will continue to use bricks and blocks because that's what people want. So it would take either a massive shift in taste or the building regs massively improved to sway towards alternate methods.

The first timber frame houses we built about 12 years ago where an obsolute disgrace. In the 24 bases we built the timber frame company didn't get the measurements correct once. Some where resting on the sub floor and some where already touching the out side skin at the base. Doors and window widths and head heights where wrong,by the time we reached the roof the frame was that much out of plumb that there was no cavity. My brother in law rented a brand new timber frame build 2 years ago that I am convinced had no insulation in between the studs.

I think the best we can hope for is wider cavity builds with pumped insulation and more effort to improve airtightness to get it at least half of what is the minimum rate now. That would be a start.

 

It's a regional thing.

 

when I was in the South, Timber Frame had a bad name, because some mass builders built some shockingly bad TF houses.

 

Then I moved to Scotland. TF is the normal construction method up here, they have been doing it for decades and know how to do it. Everything fits properly, and nothing rots.

 

Granted over the years insulation has improved. I have encountered older TF houses with a 4" frame and no insulation. It wa about 15 years ago that they moved up to 6" frames being normal to fit more insulation in.
 

[Ferdinand]

As far as I am aware Timber Frame in Scotland never went away, and has been a consistent 15-20% of the market. E.g. Stuart Milne have been doing TF for 40 years.

 

I wonder if closer contact to a real timber industry in Scotland is part of it? There are house builders whose primary identity is as Timber companies. 

 

I am not sure either how much substance there was to the World in Action documentary in 1983 and how much it was a scare story.

 

Ferdinand

Edited February 7, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Declan52]

Bit in BBC news this morning about a company in Alfreton Derbyshire doing prefabed houses in a factory setting. Takes 8 weeks from start to craning the completed house onto site. Didn't look that bad either.

[PeterW]

3 hours ago, Declan52 said:

Bit in BBC news this morning about a company in Alfreton Derbyshire doing prefabed houses in a factory setting. Takes 8 weeks from start to craning the completed house onto site. Didn't look that bad either.

 

Any idea who that was...??

 

The only company around there went down the tubes last year owing a fair bit - just couldn't get the buyers as the pricing was too high 

[Declan52]

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

 

Any idea who that was...??

 

The only company around there went down the tubes last year owing a fair bit - just couldn't get the buyers as the pricing was too high 

It was on about 6:20 on the BBC breakfast show. Didn't catch the name as i not exactly awake yet.

[Gone West]

5 hours ago, PeterW said:

 

Any idea who that was...??

 

 

I think it was SIG Building Solutions, but I wasn't taking that much notice. I was more interested in my breakfast.

[Ferdinand]

12 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

 

I think it was SIG Building Solutions, but I wasn't taking that much notice. I was more interested in my breakfast.

Yes - they are here.

 

But I haven't head of them doing whole houses before.

[PeterW]

They bought a modular company a while back. Did insides for hotels etc that were just lifted into place. 

 

Still struggle to see how they will make it profitable to the point of being volume friendly unless they go in on a margin basis with a volume house builder.