Wood framed houses in the UK

[D.P.]

Wooden houses are stronger than brick. When I lived in the US i witnessed an earthquake, hurricane and tornado - all on the low end, plus numbingly severe storms. I never saw much damage to wooden houses except when a tree fell in the house. But brick houses often suffered major damsge, reached walls, even collapsed.

Wooden houses can twist, stretch and bend. Bricks houses just crack and collapse. House insurance on brick houses was much more expensive.

 

[Amp34]

Surely with our notorious winter storms this is not a very wise idea...

Pffff

Benign British weather is not an argument.

Wood framed houses take less time to frame, but cost about as much (you're still looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds to build something around 2,000ft2, because the interior is still the interior). Materials wise it's really not going to be much cheaper. Land and labour costs on the other hand may be different.

I'd certainly consider damp in parts of the UK though, but then again there are parts of the Americas that are very similar in that regard and timber frame houses seem to be fine there too.

There are positives and negatives to both. A decent brick house is going to last longer than a wood framed house, but at the same time most brick houses aren't well built so that negates a lot of those factors. Wood framed buildings are easier to modify so can be updated/upgraded easier than a brick house (hollow walls, lightweight materials etc).

 

[Supernova]

It's so common to buy a new house and get a wooden frame. Can't comment on their ability to hold up in wind, but they are ridiculously thermally efficient. My old house is a hot box this summer. New houses I have been in are just soooooooo nice and cool.

 

[Maccapacca]

Not many timber framed houses here, some of them are 1000 years old.


http://www.wealddown.co.uk

 

[Amp34]

As I understand it, the house frame, ie. the load bearing part of the house is wooden. The outer brick is just a facade, ie. it gives no structural integrity to the house.

Just as long as they will stand up to our weather, not be built as flimsy as those in Rural America and not turn into shrapnel in a big 10 year gale.

I would hope they are substantially cheaper too. Outside of wealth hotspots the price of houses in America is very low in comparison. This tallys with they lack of employment protections, so mortgages are easier to get if you house costs the equivalent of £40k. If after Brexit the Tories, as expected, go after the employment rights to encourage foreign investment we may be forced to build cheaper so that banks will lend to people with little to no job security.

To put this into perspective (Admittedly i'm not in the US, I'm in Canada but they follow almost identical building codes). For a 2,000ft2 "custom" (i.e not off plan from a new built estate) house you're looking at around $400,000 ($300,000).

Around $100,000 of that will be the earthworks and foundations (digging out and concreting in the basement).*
Around $180,000 of that will be the interior (plasterboarding/plastering, flooring, electrical, plumbing and interior fixture and finish.
Around $20,000 of that will be permits and design costs
Around $40,000 of that will be roofing, windows and exterior (i.e. siding, or rendering)
And around $60,000 of that will be the actual framework for the house, a fair chunk of that (in the region of $5-10k) being floor joists that aren't going to change with wood or brick construction.

The savings probably isn't as much as you think, as only the $60,000 cost is really going to change.

The reason some random home in the midwest could be built for 40k is because labour will be super cheap, the interior will be very basic and the house will probably be a small bungalow on a plot of land miles from anywhere.

*Foundation in this instance would be 8-10ft deep, 8"+ thick poured concrete or concrete blocks. That's for a basement, but anywhere cold the foundation needs to be at least 6-7ft deep so it gets beneath the frost level and doesn't get forced up out of the ground. Same reason all services (water/sewers) are 7' beneath the ground too.

 

[PaulCa]

Wooden houses are stronger than brick. When I lived in the US i witnessed an earthquake, hurricane and tornado - all on the low end, plus numbingly severe storms. I never saw much damage to wooden houses except when a tree fell in the house. But brick houses often suffered major damsge, reached walls, even collapsed.

Wooden houses can twist, stretch and bend. Bricks houses just crack and collapse. House insurance on brick houses was much more expensive.

In earthquakes yes. With wind it's the weight that matters. Bricks don't fly, wood panelling and 2x4s do.

 

[PaulCa]

To put this into perspective (Admittedly i'm not in the US, I'm in Canada but they follow almost identical building codes). For a 2,000ft2 "custom" (i.e not off plan from a new built estate) house you're looking at around $400,000 ($300,000).

I suspect this is partly the exported American dream. America does have quite a lot of rich and middle class areas, but a large portion of America is extremely poor.

America only looks like a rich country, it's a powerful country with massive debts and huge wealth inequality that hosts some of the poorest and most run down areas in the world.

On house prices, to put things into perspective of what I'm talking about, consider this random search on a property site in Kansas....
https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sa...738,-93.841095,38.56481,-95.309144_rect/9_zm/

 

[theone8181]

It's so common to buy a new house and get a wooden frame. Can't comment on their ability to hold up in wind, but they are ridiculously thermally efficient. My old house is a hot box this summer. New houses I have been in are just soooooooo nice and cool.

Strangely my mum and dad bought a new house about a year ago and thats breeze not wood, although i believe the joists are OSB rather than solid wood.

EDIT ^kansas houses are very cheap, my car cost the same as one of those.

 

[D.P.]

In earthquakes yes. With wind it's the weight that matters. Bricks don't fly, wood panelling and 2x4s do.

Brick walls just collapse with the strong winds, sure the bricks don't fly but you are crushed under a brick wall it doesn;t help your chances.

 

[TacticalFish]

On house prices, to put things into perspective of what I'm talking about, consider this random search on a property site in Kansas....
https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sa...738,-93.841095,38.56481,-95.309144_rect/9_zm/

I became aware of this in a rather strange way recently. I have a doppelganger who frequently puts my email, address instead of his, so I've been receiving property listings. Recently had a short exchange with him, in which he informed me he was buying 5 houses for $200k. The same cost as my pokey studio flat.

 

[PaulCa]

Brick walls just collapse with the strong winds, sure the bricks don't fly but you are crushed under a brick wall it doesn;t help your chances.

Two things:
1. The required wind speeds to actually collapse a UK style twin block and brick wall with metal ties, 2x12 wooden beams, slate roof and 8 foot foundations... is a LOT higher than taking apart one of those houses in the Kansas properties link which I highly doubt would survive a standard winter Atlantic storm with 85+mph winds.
2. the damage is limited to brick the house, anyone inside and possibly cars parked outside. Where as, when one of those Kansas houses is ripped apart in a Tornado or large storm, large sharp parts of it will fly for miles at high speed causing damage to other properties and killing people for a considerable distance around.

I watched a video of a recent tornado, think it was last year. The video was from a school security camera. The doors blew in the windows were smashed by debris, parts of the roof lifted, but the brick building survived and protected the kids hiding inside. The hallways were full of debris etc. etc. It was a large violent tornado. The building was repairable. Normal wooden buildings and houses around it were completely leveled, turned into a strewn mass of wooden debris and nothing else.

 

[Pocah]

There aren't many benefits for the buyer, just builders will tell you there is, but the benefit is mostly theirs. A primary milestone with a building is to get the roof on so that work can proceed inside the house. Since most of the construction is done at the factory, the frame and roof goes up on site very fast indeed allowing second fix in all the faster.
Personally I hate plasterboard walls! Also timber frame houses can slump a little meaning you can get issues with doors not closing and so on.I would not buy one. If a brick house gets damp, it's no big deal. If a timber frame house gets damp it can be a huge deal. But it's a personal choice. Many people think they are just fine.

 

[Transam]

They're also harder to get a mortgage for, because they are of "non-standard construction". Which in turn affects resale value, because - surprise - they're harder to get a mortgage for! There are companies that specialise in mortgaging them, but I suspect because it's a bit of a "niche" market their rates would be higher.

 

[sovietspybob]

They're also harder to get a mortgage for, because they are of "non-standard construction". Which in turn affects resale value, because - surprise - they're harder to get a mortgage for! There are companies that specialise in mortgaging them, but I suspect because it's a bit of a "niche" market their rates would be higher.

Just want to call this out to be not true, standard timber framed houses in the UK can be mortgaged in the standard way no issues. It's only if you have a fully wooden house without a brick or block outer wall it becomes an issue, if this were true there's such a large percentage of timber frame new built houses in the last 20 years tones of people in modern houses would have issues getting mortgages.

 

[Transam]

All you need to do is google the subject... https://www.homeprotect.co.uk/non-standard-construction-insurance/buying-a-non-standard-home
And there are plenty more pages on the subject. Just google "Timber framed mortgage" and you'll find plenty of info on it.

 

[the_r_sole]

Timber framed houses are the most common construction method in scotland where the weather is more extreme than the rest of the uk, so the weather isn't an argument at all - it's bizarre the hold "brick and mortar" has over england, construction technology has developed massively but the bricklayers can't adapt. There's a lot of performance issues with traditional construction (try detailing a passivhaus in trad!) but the english fascination with it is difficult to break, just for information I recently worked on a development in the south of england where the houses were high performance timber frames brought on site in panels and craned into place, clad with either render, timber or some had brick slips, cheapest house was £665k and not a single one had issues with getting a mortgage.
Timber framed houses are not considered non-traditional construction by most lenders any more, timber cladding can be problematic if you are trying to get a self build mortgage but once it's built it's fairly easy to get mortgaged

 

[MikeTheNative]

I find it really odd they call it' non standard home' when 90% of new builds are timber framed. However if you click on timber framed it showed the old tudor houses where the wood is visible from the outside.

 

[Transam]

One from the Guardian... https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jul/03/building-society-refuses-mortgage-timber-frame

Yes, they are more common in new-build properties - but then new-builds are generally considered as inferior to older houses, regardless of construction.
Which would you rather have, a ten year old timber-framed house, or a ten year old brick and block house?

 

[Transam]

And just to underline it - my mortgage is with Accord, part of the Yorkshire Bank. So I googled "Accord timber framed" and this came up - http://www.mortgages-direct-uk.com/accord_mortgages_85_sc.htm

Look down towards the bottom, at the list of "Acceptable Property Types". "Timber framed - no"

 

[Transam]

In fact, here's their full list - note how many have timber framed as either "no" or "refer" - https://www.google.com/search?q=timber+framed&sitesearch=mortgages-direct-uk.com&gws_rd=ssl