US timber house designs

[Andy Hall]

Of course. It's the one you have to pay for.

[Matt]

Have you gone blind already?

[Doctor Drivel]

Lord Hall, you posted two at exactly the same time.

[Doctor Drivel]

Matt, you posted two at exactly the same time.

[Andy Hall]

If you're going to a Travelodge, you're not going to a hotel anyway.

[Doctor Drivel]

How much do you pay by the hour?

[Matt]

Quite easy to achieve when Andy Hall is at one end of the country and I am at the other. Maybe that simple fact slightly escaped your mind?

Anyway shouldn't timegoesby be posting today as surely Dr Drivel is otherwise engaged elsewhere on a saturday tea time?

(the posts also appeared to be 25 seconds apart if you looked closely)

[Doctor Drivel]

Lord Hall, it must be.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|> |Isn't the UK problem with timber frame more down to |>

|> More British fire regulations. |> In the UK American style wooden houses |> are allowed only if they are more |> widely spaced than is normal in the UK. |> It all goes back to The Great |> Fire of London. | |Nope. The highest timber framed house is 5 or 6 floors, which is a block of |flats. Most new Travelodge's are timber framed. I stayed in one when |outside was -8C and I never required the heating on.

Nope I did not *say* timber *framed* I said American style wooden houses. I never mentioned stories. American style houses have wooden sides and sometimes wooden tiles

>>Part B - Fire Safety Externally - The external walls and roof will resist spread of fire to walls and roofs of other buildings.

[Doctor Drivel]

This idiot is making this up. Read on...

We do.

$FILE/ukts2004.pdf8,286,000 tons of British wood was delivered in 2004.

Whatever that means.

The fool does not know that the pre-fabs were made in Canada..and some from Sweden.

Most can't do one properly. This one is on Mars indeed and has never been on UK building site.

** snip babbling drivel ***

Sad but true.

[Tony Bryer]

How much of it was suitable for building use is a different matter: all the timber I've ever bought is from Scandinavia or North America - colder climate = slower growth = denser/stronger timber.

[Capitol]

Parts of the US do not allow wooden houses in urban areas because of the fire risk. The construction standards for wooden houses in the US are just as bad, if not worse than in the UK. The US has very poor insulation standards and in the south, voracious termites which regularly destroy wooden houses. Concrete tiles are not altogether a good idea, as in tornado areas, flying lumps of concrete can kill people very easily. If you've seen areas after a tornado, you would further appreciate the US reasoning of expendable light structures. I always view US houses as upmarket garden sheds. The beauty of the system is the very low cost of replacement/repair and modification. You can afford to tear down and replace many US homes on a 30/40 year basis.

Regards Capitol

[Capitol]

That we can believe.

Regards Capitol

[Capitol]

Not now in urban upmarket areas, where land is expensive. It's just as bad as here.

Regards Capitol

[Roger]

The message from "Doctor Drivel" contains these words:

Dribble displaying his ignorance again. The typical 1940s prefab in Britain was made from cast concrete sections. It would have been pointless importing such buildings from anywhere abroad, let alone as far away as Canada.

I lived for a time as a child in a 19th century wooden building since demolished (not a prefab and cold as hell in the winter). Judging by its name it was probably a Dutch construction. A mile away there was a small number of post war wooden buildings. The plaque outside says something to the effect they were a gift from a grateful nation. The nation in question was Norway, not Sweden. Out of town there was at least one estate of concrete prefabs and probably more. They have since been demolished but as recently as 2 or 3 years ago such concrete prefabs elsewhere have made the news as long term residents resisted being rehoused.

[marble]

Its probably only good enough for chipboard and paper.

Whenever I see manufactures stamp on wood in at the saw mill its always from a foreign source. In any event if we import vast amounts of timber I say "We have no timber in this country" is nearer the mark than "we do"

[Doctor Drivel]

More overt Rogerness. The post war pre-fabs were made of wood, even with integral fitted kitchens. Unknown of in those days.

[Doctor Drivel]

8,286,000 tons of British wood a year, is a lot of wood.

[Andy Hall]

Actually there were a variety of materials.

up "Temporary Housing Programme"

There were a number of approved designs:

- Arcon. Steel frame clad in asbestos cement

- Uni Seco. Light timber frame, asbestos cement clad

- Tarran. Light timber frame and concrete panel clad

- Aluminium bungalow

- Portal bungalow. Steel framed similar to Arcon

- Orlit. Precast concrete

- Phoenix. Later version of Arcon

- Universal

- B2. Aluminium

I can't find any reference to any of completely wooden construction in the Ministry of Works program. As several articles point out, timber was scarce, but aluminium, steel and concrete were less so.

It may be that there were some wooden buildings from places like Canada and Norway for reasons that we know, but I can't find anything that suggests that there were a lot of them.

[Doctor Drivel]

It wasn't in Sweden and Canada.