The one further issue likely to occur with the proposed options is where does interstitial condensation occur in the wall once the internal heat does not reach the solid wall despite the vapour permeability. Also vapour permeability of plasterboard is poor and should be lime plaster on fibre or woodwool board.

Thanks Neil , as an architect I appreciate your work and insights ... looking at a v large , old damp building at moment in Ireland ... rain guaranteed .Keep up great work .

Breathable insulation will be great until some one paints the wall with non breathable paint

13:20 in your video describes what Barratts and others are doing on a lot of sites now in England, and you are correct its all about cost pressures. Having designed both masonry and timber frame houses there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods, I think a skilled workforce, experienced in a given method probably has more effect than what the wall is made out of given both meet relevant standards. Timber has a speed advantage but the cost savings (in England) are not realised all of the time and differetial movement has to be accounted for. We do not have large forests in the UK so price depends on Canadian and Scandinavian supplies and has been very expensive post Covid leading to one site I worked on switching back to masonry half way through the build-out to save money with a hundred or so plots to go. Thermal drift over time, or degradation or compaction of mineral wool insulation is an issue for both methods but the lack of wall ties where the insulation is placed means timber frame is more exposed to this and often (depending on design of wall build up) the timber studs are a thermal bridges reducing the overall U-value (although wood is a better insulator than Brick or Block). Lack of resilience against common defects is always an issue in modern methods of construction, Timber frame cannot take a leaking roof or window head or cill for long and relies on membranes to protect the structural part of the building. Although when well constructed and new the performance is great, over time I can see it being an issue. Timber structures are less resilient to fire damage as the structural members can burn. To be fair its not a deal breaker as a fire in any house will then result in major repairs being required but more damage can be done quicker to a timber framed building. They are also less resilient to flooding than masonry which is becoming more of an issue in England in the past decade or so. Sound on party walls is also a problem, without the mass of masonry or special detailing with MLV, resilient bars etc and is expensive in floor space and £'s Terraced or Semi detached properties do not perform as well as masonry as easily but can be made to work. Masonry has benefits in thermal mass dependant on block type used (not taken into consideration within the regulations which is a big oversight and leads to Part O which IMO is overly onerous and prescriptive and badly thought through causing confusion by overruling other parts of the regs like K and M for no benefit). Phase shift and amplitude attenuation in heat energy is used in DIN standards and more informative for real world performance than just U-value alone. Timber framed buildings tend to heat up and cool down quicker, I think of it like a pendulum with the time of year, day, night and heating cycles all effecting the temperature inside the home. A light pendulum (Timber frame) is more susceptible to cold spells and heat waves as it is easy to move quickly. A heavy pendulum (Masonry) acts as a break to the heating or cooling by storing the heat and releasing it back into the rooms or absorbing excess heat keeping the rooms cooler smoothing the fluctuations over a 24 hour period or more.

i think rammed reinforced earth also needs to become more common in the uk. We've got plenty of dirt :P it wont rot, wont burn, can't be infested, acts as a thermal mass to regulate temperature, and most importantly i think is the benefit of it being much easier to make air tight. you know a solid slab is air tight, but a timber and masonry build there could be gaps all over the place. I really think its the direction construction should have gone. we used to build with clay/dirt and straw, and ram it together. After concrete was invented and firing clay bricks started to be mass produced, rather than realising we could use the cement to reinforce the way we already built, we abandoned it entirely in favour of either pure clay bricks, or pure concrete. Though the one main issue seems to be the method. theres not really been a well developed and fast way to create rammed earth. even the biggest scale builders i've seen using it have guys mix up a batch, wheel barrow it into the form, and then theres a guy standing in forms with a pneumatic tamper who has to whack it all down, and the result is an inconsistent compression thats visible from the outside. From doing some small scale test theres ways to ensure a more consistent finish on the outside face, but the problem is scale. theres no large machines built specifically for ramming earth, but i think if there was it'd be a lot more practical than wheel barrows and hand ramming. But as you say, resistance to new methods is just due to infrastructure. Those machines dont exist, someone would have to invent them, and so rammed earth is only built by specialist builders and self builders.

A house made of fast grown pine that's not correctly pressure treated

America's massive problems with black rot damp and fire and then California I think what you're saying is a lot of lies here to protect your company

We're supposed to be building homes for the future not wooden temporary sheds

Can you talk more about the different types of pressure treatment there are for woods and why in Norway they use much better pressure treatment

The wood that you're using is not correctly pressure treated there is different grades

Adding "cavity" is a bad idea..

just after a quick look i couldn't really find anything. unfortunately theres so many episodes of world in action (over a thousand) that it'd be unlikely anyone has ripped that many vhs'. Though one interesting thing i noticed in a synopsis of the episode, is they describe it as "Investigates the building practices of one of the UK's largest house builders 'Barrett Homes' and whether their quickly built timber frame system houses are suffering quality issues" As i live in a barrett house i feel more than qualified to say the issue is barrett, not the construction method. Sound slike the documentary needed to be more specific. Maybe it would have been barrett that went away and not timber construction.

I have a ex council Swedish house which was built in 1946. It still has the original stained pine weather boarding and the timber is in good condition. Now thinking of retrofitting on outside to improve insulation.

What difference would the US wild fires have if the houses were not timber frame?

Timber frame is fine if you use the right quality wood, protect it with block walls and it is built by someone competent. But the problem in the UK is there are so many cowboy builders who just bodge jobs, they use the wrong wood that rots quickly and they put wood cladding on the houses instead of block walls. I've seen lots of timber framed buildings that are only about 15 years old and all the wood cladding is completely rotten and needing replaced because the builder used a cheap wood that rots quickly in this wet climate.

Are these doors top or bottom mounted? I would look at bifold express

Concrete columns and roofs with thermal brick infill is popular here in Italy. But there are builders offering wood construction.

My first house which i bought in 1976,was ex local authority built in Northampton around 1970. There were thousands of similar properties on the eastern district mostly brick first floor then timber cladding or tile hanging above. I only lived in it for 5yrs but remember it being warm and felt solid. Some 50 yrs on they're still standing and I've not heard of any issues regarding them. A further point is that concrete block production produces large amount of co2 so timber framing is beneficial in that regard also

Timber framed construction was heavily used by the various New Towns Authorities in 1970's. 100,000s of homes in Northampton, Corby, Peterborough, Milton Keynes and Telford by the Development Corporations using Midland Housing Consortium (MHC) frames that were prefabricated and delivered to site on the backs of lorries for fixing to prepared foundations. Most timber framed Development Corporation houses were clad in brick with particularly quick completion time. I remember one exercise that P'boro' DC carried out saw a 3 bed detached house erected onto prepared foundations and ready for occupation within 9 days, including all the external brickwork. To my knowledge the majority of the DC homes are still in use today, 50 years on with no issues,

Why not build more reinforced concrete blocks of flats? Isn't high rise the so needed affordable housing?

Layperson here, we seem to create more problems than we solve by reinventing the wheel

My timber frame extension onto brick semi is going up right now. Walls up, roof about to start. Timber cladding on the back and brick slips on the side and front as the council didn't want anything other than brick appearence from the street (even though not a conservation area) which i guess is just an extension of the widespread traditional is best attitude. It has gone up ever so quickly, and the insulation advantage is extreme.

I don't think anyone would deny that it's possible to build a timber frame house with great durability and safety but I think the issue is that a lot of people don't trust the house builders to actually do it properly or a previous owner to not have made modifications that compromise it. I wouldn't speculate on whether or not it's representative but we've all seen the videos of that Welsh guy who does inspections pulling fake weep vents out of the walls. If they're doing that kind of thing with the parts of the house we can see how is anyone to trust that all the membranes and barriers are installed correctly?

thank you! very informative.

D.E.W. WEAPON KINDLE

I’m considering a timber frame house for when I move to France, simply because I want to do a self build project. What interests me is lower construction costs (I would do most of the work myself) and I could have it insulated to the highest standards. I have a question - do I have to have a concrete foundation or is there any other type of foundation that is suitable?

Timber Frame, the clue is in the name!! I am planning a self build in central Scotland in the next few years, I am pretty set on the timber frame route on the following reasons, Better straightness and accuracy of walls due to being factory built. Not saying brickies can’t build straight walls but they are hard to come by, proper ones that is. Superior insulation abilities which is a big thing these days. Insulation can be inbuilt at the factory saving site time and risk of errors. Service cavities can be built on to maintain the insulation values allowing cables and pipes to be run in the walls. My biggest fear of this self build is trying to find a proper builder that can do the bits I can’t. I served my time as an electrician in the early nineties, we had skilled people then who could build a straight wall and plaster it flat. Joiners who could make things from stock. Nowadays it’s all posers with every tool imaginable wrapped up in ppe cluelessly going forward.

I have to be honest. I'm American, I'm a carpenter, i owned a construction company for 25 years. We bought a 200 year old stone home in france almost 3 years ago for a vacation/ retirement home. Within 6 months we decided to permanently live in france, france isn't perfect, but the us is just failing. I can live in france for what i was paying for health insurance in the us. Anyways, after doing some remodeling and watching a new 6 unit apartment being built, I feel like I've been building with popsicle sticks. Floors, walls, ceilings, it's all concrete, and blocks. The only wood in my house is the 2nd floor and roof framing. There are literally homes in my village that are 500 years old. I'm a carpenter by trade, but i love my stone home.

You can get a morgage no problem in Scotland - I had a timber frame, timber clad house in Shetland with Halifax Building Society, which was no problem, but their in-house insurance company wouldn't touch it, so it has been a bit more expensive to insure (there not being much competition). The type is warm, very robust, standing up well to the strongest winds in Britain, and in Shetland has had far fewer structural problems than concrete block which tends to turn to mush in Shetland's climate!

I would think you could skip the 25mm air gap altogether with vapor-permeable mineral insulation, hence the walls wouldn't be 80mm thicker for the same R-value as foamboard insulation, but rather 55mm (or 30mm here, where the air gap is noted as 50mm)

Surprised you didn't mention the tudor timber frame houses from 500-600 years ago! Still a lot standing strong. If/when I do a self build i would choose a timber frame construction. I enjoy working with wood. One negative is the modern fast groun softwood is rubbish quality compared to the wood they used to use.

Do you happen to have a video on suitable types of foundations for timber frame homes?

😊bit late to be asking this question they have been building them for decades.

Ultimately the longevity of any timber-frame house will depend on how well the occupants can keep water (and fire) away from the timber. If they go around damaging the weatherproof and air barriers due to a lack of knowledge as to how to penetrate these correctly when needed, then the building is going to suffer premature failure.

Would it be any cheaper to do away with block exterior? Are you aware of any in Scotland?

The upstairs "shower-room" absolutely should have a dormer. It's a huge improvement with obvious functional benefits that can be easily achieved since the entire roof is being replaced and re-designed.

Used to own a Colt house. Timber framed with cedar cladding and cedar roof shingles. All built on a concrete base. Built in the 60s. Only main difference over a brick house from the same era was regular oiling of the outside woodwork. But in reality no different to painting the outside of the brick and render house.

Subbed! So glad this recommendation was sent my way. Currently in process of moving back to England from Massachusetts, USA. Your content is superb, with such an articulate and well-spoken presentation style. Thank you!

Modern timber frames are just sheds. Besides, an inside wall that is only plasterboard is useless, tacky, to screw things to. Land prices do NOT rise due to limited supply. Houses are bid up to the max people 'can' pay. Then all that money gets used up on the new builds. All that is left over, large or small, is the land price as it is at the end of the chain. The price of houses does not alter due to building costs. If new houses were made cheaper no one would sell them cheaper!

@5:05; this documentary did not, in fact, kill timber frame building in the UK, but it did focus on one particular mass house builder, Barrett Homes (still pretty much building crap homes). In the 26 September 2022 edition of 'Inside housing', a report called 'Timber-frame buildings and cavity fires: the burning question', looked at the September 2019 fire that burnt four storey Richmond House, Worcester Park, South West London, the ground in a matter of minutes and the contributing factors. Timber framing continues to be used and the outbreak of fires is always because of poor construction methods that leaves voids in the cavity walls, thereby allowing fire to spread rapidly.

I’ve designed homes in brick veneer construction for over 30 years in Australia. Although it’s starting to change, the vast majority of homes in the cooler states are built with timber frames and clad in various materials, brick being the most common but in recent years rendered foam, aerated concrete and various other materials are being used for cladding. The frames are usually only 90mm think which are adequate for current insulation requirements depending on orientation and location of windows.

Having lived in northeast Massachusetts, we love timber frame construction. We did a lot of renovations and also DIY construction on our house there -- sturdy and so easy to renovate and repair compared to bricks and concrete. The worst thing, however, is the cedar cladding (aka "siding") on the outside of these USA houses -- very expensive because it's enormous pain to maintain since every board has to be cleaned, scraped/sanded before being painted (or stained). Brick exterior is so much more maintenance-free, and thus cheaper. Vinyl cladding/siding as an alternative in USA is dead ugly to look at, and environmentally toxic to manufacture & dispose of. Cement-board cladding/siding is heavy and also needs periodic painting. No wonder the word painting has the prefix "pain"!!!

Lots of valid points made and it's truly mind-blowing that timber construction is not more widespread given the real cost savings and speed of construction that it offers. That said, Aviva is one of the largest UK insurers. The home insurance that they sell and underwrite expressly excludes timber frame construction. I don't need to tell you how big of a problem something like this is for the construction industry. And in case you thought that maybe regulators can fix this, the insurance industry self-regulates ...

Timber framed houses might be more popular in England if that discount in building cost compared to a solid masonry house carried through to a lower retail price to the end customer, it doesn't so why would you pay the same money for a large shed over a brick house?

You do seem to defend timber a lot. It can't burn down? It can't rot? Very brave words. You must know the reality is that buildings are never perfect and builders are not perfect and owners do bad things to buildings. These factors which I bet will happen over 100yrs of a house will impact the quality of the timber. I.e. damp. One little mistake and it can have a big impact. You should at least say there is a greater risk to the structural integrity over 100yrs to timber than brick as the risk from damp and fire is higher. Bricks can get damp and dry out, they're quite forgiving. What life expectancy would you genuinely give a timber house vs a brick house? People widely question if houses in the US will last 30yrs. We have a history of houses lasting hundreds of years.

The BBC did a Panorama show called 'Transplant: Are the donors really dead'. Stopped people from being organ donors for years. Strangely, this documentary has also disappeared.

I would always go for block construction for the internal walls. Hard to put it into words but I don't like the hollow feeling of timber frames especially with laminate flooring. Block work built just feels more solid in comparison.

When properly done timber framing is a good solution for building houses. They start to take off here in the Netherlands as well, in the same form as in Scotland, with a brick outer leaf or brick slip covering to maintain the traditional look. But in my eyes there would be nothing wrong with a good metal, wood or composite cladding, just not the awful UPVC which is used in the US so much. When providing for stud walls that are a minimum of 8" deep a superb insulation value can be obtained which can reach passive house standards, I have seen timber houses premanufactured in Switzerland which had 12" thick insulation. Funny is the fact that the single most widespread building methods in the Netherlands is considered non standard in the UK, that is premanufactured concrete elements.

What about buildings insurance for timber frame homes?