Stick-built or factory panels: two ways to build a timber frame

Stick-built

The frame is cut and put together on site, piece by piece: sole plates, studs, headers, floor joists and rafters. It is how most timber extensions, roofs and one-off buildings are made.

• Nothing has to be ordered months ahead, and no crane or lorry access is needed for big panels.
• Changes can be made as the build goes on: a window moved, an opening widened.
• It copes with awkward sites, existing buildings that are not square, and extensions that have to meet an old house.
• It relies on the skill of the carpenters, and the frame is open to the weather for longer while it goes up.

Factory panels

The walls, and sometimes floors and roof, are made in a factory as panels and delivered to site to be craned into place.

• The shell goes up very quickly once it arrives.
• It suits repeated house types on larger sites.
• Every decision has to be final before manufacture, and changes afterwards are difficult.
• Site access for delivery and lifting has to be good.

Which suits what

For a single house, an extension, a garage, or a building going inside or onto something that already exists, stick building is usually the better fit. For a run of identical houses on an open site, panels can make sense.

Either way the frame is only the start: it then needs breather membrane, insulation, cladding or a masonry skin, and the roof covering.

What we do

We build timber frames on site. Recent work includes a house built entirely on site, a timber frame extension clad in Cedral, and an office and canteen framed inside a steel building.

See timber frame and roof framing