The Pros and Cons of Building with Timber Frame

Offering a quick, cost-effective route to an energy efficient bespoke home, timber frame is rightly popular with self-builders – but it won’t suit everyone. Check out the tips and tricks below to find out whether it’s the best option for your project:

Who can design my timber frame home?

Panelised timber systems are right up there with masonry as a leading structural option. So any architect or house designer worth their salt should be familiar with conventional framing and capable of coming up with a viable scheme that takes advantage of its innate qualities.

That said, your kit supplier will need to translate the approved plans into a buildable reality – and will often take over responsibility for the structural design and engineering. So the process is fairly collaborative. Many framing companies can offer an in-house bespoke design service  for the entire scheme.

What kind of house can I build?

This is a truly flexible building method – allowing you to create a bespoke home in pretty much any style that’s totally tailored to your needs, design tastes, budget and the demands of your plot (or the whims of the planners).

You can even mix the panels with other structural materials, such as steel or glulam (an engineered, laminated timber beam), to deliver features that can’t be cost-effectively achieved with standard framing alone.

How is the frame made?

The overwhelming majority of shells are produced off-site in a factory – although the extent of prefabrication differs according to the complexity of the project and whether you opt for open or closed panel framing. Large parts of the process are computer-controlled, so you can expect accuracy and quality as standard.

The core part of a timber frame is the load-bearing, storey-height walls. These are lightweight engineered panels, each comprising a network of studs encased on either side with a wood-based sheathing, such as oriented strandboard (OSB).

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