Lloyds Timber Frames is a part of CGL Developments, a housing and development group headquartered in Oswestry, Shropshire. As a group, CLG tends to operate regionally, but Lloyds Timber Frames is a national operator and an innovative leader in the growing off-site housing construction market
By John O'Hanlon
We tend to think of timber framed houses in terms of the wooden structures, often kit-built from Scandinavian or Canadian suppliers, that crop up from time to time, are striking when they do appear, but which in this country are seen as a rarity. However a house does not need to look like a log cabin or a tithe barn to be of basic timber construction. “The timber frame is the structural, load-bearing part of the house,” says Lloyd’s Marketing Director Duncan Dibble, “but you can have any kind of external finish you like – brick, block, wood or a combination of these. Basically there is no way of telling from the outside whether a house is timber-framed or not.” However timber frame construction offers many advantages over brick, both for the end customer and for Lloyds Timber Frames’ direct customer, the contractor.
Advantages of timber
The benefits of off-site prefabrication are becoming more widely recognised throughout the construction industry, says Dibble. For the designer, the timber frame method offers flexible planning, energy efficiency, economic use of materials and a wide range of external finishes. Compared with masonry construction, timber frame is more accurate and the lower overall dead weight of the structure, particularly if light cladding is used, may permit lighter foundations.
For the contractor, timber framed construction reduces site work and allows fast completion, avoiding most of the drying out time necessary with masonry construction and reducing the remedial ‘snagging’ required. For the client or occupant of the house, the high level of insulation possible can reduce the cost of heating. Comfortable room temperatures are quickly reached and economically maintained when the heating is on. Dry construction means that decoration can be carried out soon after completion of the building without risk of cracking and deterioration of finishes. Timber framed buildings are also easy to customise and extend.
Energy saving
The industry has been given a boost by very recent official pronouncements about the need to conserve energy in the domestic arena. Within days of Tony Blair’s retirement announcement his successor Gordon Brown was stressing the need to encourage low energy housing, and as Duncan Dibble points out, this can be delivered on many levels by timber construction. “There is no mainstream building material that has a lower carbon coefficient than timber. Steel is our closest competitor, but it takes a lot of energy to produce steel, even recycled steel, and steel is an efficient heat conductor unlike wood.”
The U-value is the measure for heat loss through walls – the lower the better. In the building industry 27 is considered rather good, but even with standard insulation Lloyds Timber Frames consistently achieves a figure of 23, and can easily bring that down to 11 by using high performance insulation products. “There is a lot of research going into insulation. Recycled paper is a really good insulation material, and I have even seen houses in which untreated sheepswool was used.” You can get the U-value of a wall close to zero that way, though it’s too costly for commercial use, he admits.
All the timber used is sourced through a local supplier and is accredited to Canadian Lumber Standard levels. This is a guarantee of fitness for purpose rather than sustainability, which is assured through the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes. PEFC timber is from sustainably managed forests whose management implements performance standards based on internationally agreed environmental, social and economic requirements. “Fundamentally, this means that for every tree that is cut down at least two are planted,” says Dibble. “But I think everybody realises these days that timber is the most environmentally friendly way to build.”
For developers, there are grants and tax incentives for choosing energy saving construction materials and systems. In December Gordon Brown announced that newly built zero-carbon homes will be exempt from stamp duty from April for at least three years. The problem for the growing number of ethical consumers is that there is no carbon-zero home in Britain at present and the handful of carbon-neutral developments in existence have run into teething problems. It may be years before there are sufficient carbon-free homes to have any impact on tackling climate change.
Encouraged from above
“That move was supposed to give impetus to investment into zero-carbon communities,” says Duncan Dibble. “But you need critical mass to create such a community – around 200 houses.” Nevertheless 27 percent of carbon emissions in Britain come from homes — and Brown’s plan is that no new home built after 2016 will contribute to climate change. This gives a tremendous marketing boost to a company like Lloyds Timber Frames even thoughts a manufacturer it receives no direct incentive to develop greener solutions.
Structural timber is on a roll at the moment, to the consternation of the traded associations of the steel frame or brick sectors. Lloyds Timber Frames is facing the problems of success. Last year’s turnover was £5.6 million: this year’s is expected to be £7.8 million. That’s in the region of 40 percent, on top of 30 percent growth in 2006 and against background growth of 23 percent in the industry as a whole. “Most of our work at present is repeat business – we are not aggressively going out and looking for work because we don’t want to take on more business than we can handle. We want to make sure we stay ahead of the industry, not led by it.”
Self-build is the romantic face of timber construction and yes, you can go out an buy a kit from Lloyds Timber Frames, take it home and assemble it from the manual (adding a few items like windows, doors, and cladding if you need that, which Lloyds will also source for you). Or you can get a contractor to erect it for you – it will still be an economic way of raising a house. But this accounts for less than ten percent of annual sales. 90 percent is commercial, which means the customer is a developer, and of that business half is social housing and half private development.
Scaling production
The heightened demand led to the company doubling its manufacturing space in April with the acquisition of a new 2,000 square foot building inside which a third high speed saw, capable of cutting 5,000 linear metres a week, has been installed. The design staff has been increased by 100 percent as well, with three new people very recently taken on, and currently undergoing training on the Consultec timber-frame-specific design software add-on to Lloyds Timber Frames’ AutoCAD system from Autodesk. The system makes it easier to produce plans for the customised houses the market is demanding. The company used to market its product under the kind of brand names that used to be familiar – ‘The Acorn’, ‘The Rowan’, and many more standard designs. But the commercial customers tend to use their own architects, and the self-build customers were asking for so many alterations that Lloyds abandoned the concept and hasn’t sold a branded house for two years.
Neither is design for timber at all static. There are many examples of new technology, such as Lloyds Timber Frames’ Ecojoists - metal web joists, which are lighter, stronger and much more versatile than solid timber joists and have the advantage of being silent because the floorboards are fixed using expanding glue instead of nails.
From there it is a short step to the floor cassette, a factory made floor unit that can be installed in one piece using a crane. “We are going to start manufacturing these in the next few months, now that we have the people and the facilities in place,” says Dibble. It should not be a high risk venture, he thinks, though it is clearly important to be able to get the product right first time, as mistakes can’t easily be rectified on site. And soon he hopes the company can add a smart roof system, fully prefabricated and insulated, that can likewise be dropped entire onto the completed walls.
Lloyds Timber Frames is so busy that it would not make commercial sense to divert marketing resources to the self-build sector, but as Duncan Dibble says, this is a £2 billion market and one that can’t be ignored. Accordingly he is marketing Lloyds Timber Frames’ services, design and manufacturing capacity to specialist companies like Goodwood Timber Frame Services. This helps to flatten out production, and gives Lloyds a share of this important market without detracting from its important commercial work ranging from a single house, through housing developments to special one off buildings such as hospitals, motels and sports halls.