The Use of Timber in UK House Construction - A short history

Timber has proved itself to be an adaptable and flexible material throughout history, and with the ability to replenish the timber that we use, there is nothing to suggest that its popularity will reduce. 

Source: http://www.gallica.co.uk/

Timber is a lightweight, adaptable and recyclable material that has been used in construction in the UK for many thousands of years.  The use of timber for construction can be traced back over 3000 years to the Celts who constructed quite simple, but nevertheless effective 'round houses', which provided shelter and security albeit at a rather basic level. The picture on the right shows a roundhouse under construction. As the years moved on the use of timber became more widespread with the Romans, the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings using and adapting timber to create larger and more expansive buildings.

Let us take the Romans for example - most would associate Roman buildings as large masonry constructed villas, with painted plastered walls, mosaic floors and running water etc., because when a film or documentary about the Romans is broadcast, this is what is usually portrayed. It is difficult not to admire the skills and ingenuity of the Romans based upon the many wonderful examples of Roman buildings still in existence in the UK and around the world, however these larger masonry structures were inhabited primarily by the rich and powerful, and the reality was that most Romans lived in timber constructed buildings similar to the Celts who preceded them.

Source: Google Images

The Anglo Saxons (c. 420AD to 700AD) and the Vikings (c. 700AD to 1000AD) who followed the Romans, made further use of the vast amount of available timber in the UK and began moving away from the familiar round houses and started to construct square and oblong shaped houses, with larger dwellings incorporating a small number of rooms.  The Vikings started to increase the length of their houses to incorporate larger internal areas and these became know as 'longhouses'. Many Viking houses were also constructed partly below ground level and although this would require a high level of hand digging, it made the house much more comfortable when completed as it protected the internal environment from draft and cold, particularly in the often harsh weather conditions in the depths of winter.

The Medieval Period followed the Viking occupation of the UK, this period in history famously started following the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (Norman King Harold, arrow in the eye and the bayeux tapestry and all that!) and lasted to c.1500 AD.  In the early part of the Medieval Period, timber was used to construct houses, but more closely followed the square oblong shape of the Anglo Saxons, rather than the Viking longhouses.  As the Medieval period developed timber frame construction evolved, with the main structure of the building being completed and then the walls would be infilled around the frame with a technique know as 'wattle and daub'.  This was a method of weaving small branches between parts of the timber frame and then 'plastering' onto the weaved branches a mixture of clay, horse hair and sometimes horse dung!, with water,  This could be smoothed when wet and when it dried out it provided an effective wall finish that would be reasonably weather tight. The short video below gives an example of wattle and daub construction.

There are many wonderful examples of medieval buildings in the UK, where the timber frame construction can be seen.  Large timber members fixed together with a combination of timber joints and timber pegs allowed construction to be much larger and bolder.  Houses started to incorporate timber framed windows and pitched roofs that commenced mainly as thatch, but eventually incorporated a clay tiled finish.



Source: Google Images

Timber continued to be used in construction, although masonry started to become much more extensively used during the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian era for the main structure of a dwelling.  In the 'modern era', timber construction has made somewhat of a comeback with timber frame construction fast becoming the preferred method for many developers.

In conclusion, timber has proved itself to be an adaptable and flexible material throughout history, and with the ability to replenish the wood that we use, there is nothing to suggest that its popularity will wane.  On the flip side, timber is also vulnerable in certain conditions to decay and this needs to be carefully considered when using timber in construction and when a building is in use and this is a topic I will cover in further detail in future postings.

Information/opinions posted on this site are the personal views of the author and should not be relied upon by any person or any third party without first seeking further professional advice. Also, please scroll down and read the copyright notice at the end of the blog.

Bedroom Tax - Penalty or Profit?

It is hard to believe that the introduction of bedroom tax will have any impact on overcrowding as the government does not expect people to downsize.  If people do not move, all that will be achieved will be further hardship for the genuinely needy and vulnerable in our society who will have their benefits reduced.

Most people would probably agree that there is a need to radically review the social welfare system to try to address issues such as fraud, difficulty in administration and enforcement and to try to plug the financial burden on the UK by making it pay to work.  Over the years there has been a lot of media publicity with stories of those claiming benefits being better off not working than actually taking a paid job.  In their manifesto, prior to the last general election the Conservative Party were very bold in their plans for the future of the welfare system, and now in government, as part of a coalition we are about to see some of these plans coming into force under the Welfare Reform Act 2012.

In addition to unemployment the welfare reforms are also trying to address issues such as overcrowding and will penalise those on benefits who are deemed to not be using their rented accommodation to its full capacity by reducing benefits for under occupancy.  This is something that is commonly being referred to as 'bedroom tax'. Presumably the idea is that social housing providers will be required to match the needs of their tenants with the size of property they actually need, and no bigger!  In an article in Inside Housing on 23rd July 2012 the welfare reform minister Lord Freud claimed that bedroom tax will ease overcrowding and help tackle the shortage of social housing. The article makes interesting reading (Extract):

'Speaking at a Local Government Association conference this morning, the welfare reform minister defended the controversial policy, which will see social housing tenants of working age docked benefit for having a spare room. The policy is estimated to affect 660,000 households, who will lose £14 a week on average. 

Lord Freud said: ‘Nearly a third of working-age social housing tenants on housing benefit are living in accommodation which is too big for their needs, in spite of the fact of severe overcrowding. 

‘We are stopping the practice of the state paying for rooms beyond claimant needs, and that should go in some way to help tackle the social housing shortage that has been blighting too many lives.’ 

The policy is controversial as the £430 million of savings expected by the government is based on an assumption of ‘little tenant mobility’ – suggesting the government does not expect people to downsize'

Source: http://www.gentoogroup.com

It is hard to believe that the introduction of bedroom tax will have any impact on overcrowding and Lord Freud openly admits that the government does not expect people to downsize.  If people do not move, all that will be achieved will be further hardship for the genuinely needy and vulnerable in our society who will have their benefits reduced. This makes one question if overcrowding is just a smokescreen and the main motive is a stealth reduction in benefits.

In any event, if those affected were willing to move, where would they go? Have the government forgotten that there is a shortage of housing in the UK particularly in the social housing sector. In my local area the Coventry Telegraph recently reported a chronic shortage of social housing with almost 20,000 families on the homefinder waiting list – with 10 per cent deemed in urgent or extremely urgent need. This situation is typical to varying degrees across the UK.   As there is already a major shortfall in available housing, social housing providers will not have the opportunity (nor the time) to play 'match the property' if approached by a tenant who wanted to move to avoid falling foul of bedroom tax, as their more immediate priorities will be trying to address their ever increasing waiting lists and also homelessness. 

Bedroom tax is proposed for introduction in April 2013 under the Welfare Reform Act 2012. As it is mandatory to comply with legislation then there can be no question about its legality from the moment it is introduced.  A key point however is that in most cases the legislation (once introduced), will apply retrospectively and will affect many tenants claiming benefit who have been in residence in their homes for many years. It will be interesting to see if any legal challenges are made any tenants who claim that they are being penalised for something that they were not aware of at the start of their tenancy, and if they had been they may have opted for a smaller property.  Also, as there may be no suitable smaller properties available a tenant may argue that they are willing to move, but through no fault of their own they cannot.  

Lord Freud also suggested that taking in lodgers could be a solution for tenants hit by the tax!  An earlier article in Inside Housing on the 20th July claims that tenants will be able to keep rental income from lodgers without affecting their benefits!

'The major impact of the move, which the Department for Work and Pensions described as a ‘positive side effect’, is that it will help under-occupying tenants pay the bedroom tax. The change was made possible because the government has amended what counts as income in its draft regulations for universal credit.  

Currently, claimants must declare income from lodgers. This can affect their entitlement to housing benefit, jobseekers’ allowance and income support.  

Under the new regulations, from October 2013 tenants will be able to keep income from lodgers and retain full entitlement to benefit. The room let to a lodger will, however, be classed as a spare room and fall under the bedroom tax, which will be £14 per week on average'.

How ridiculous is this? This is suggesting that someone claiming benefit can now make an income by letting any spare rooms and best of all this will not impact on their benefits!.  How exactly is this going to encourage people into work, when they can have a nice little rental income sideline?  Will they pay tax on this income? Does the letting of a spare room need to be to someone who is working or will they also be claiming benefit? 

Whichever way you look at bedroom tax it is easy to foresee the fiasco that is waiting just around the corner when it is introduced.  This is undoubtably going to prove to be an administrative nightmare and it is difficult to see how it will achieve the purposes for which it will be introduced.

Information/opinions posted on this site are the personal views of the author and should not be relied upon by any person or any third party without first seeking further professional advice. Also, please scroll down and read the copyright notice at the end of the blog.

Protecting The Investment: A Housing Group's Approach to High Rise Refurbishment.

Guest article from Joe Malone BSc(Hons) ICIOB

Group Investment Programme Manager - WM Housing Group

'I would state that the key to success lies in adopting a holistic design process. We simplify future building and estate management by broadening our understanding beyond the technical requirements of building refurbishment'.

Organizations’ as large as WM Housing Group spend a great deal of capital investment on improving their housing stock and understandably are committed to maximizing the returns on that investment. As Group Investment Programme Manager I am responsible for delivering circa £25m of planned investment work this financial year and understandably have a great deal of responsibility in ensuring that the money is invested wisely. How to invest wisely is a subject in itself but I have always firmly believed that the real key to protecting the investment lies in adopting a socio-physical approach; that is to say, we absolutely have to understand the social problems on our estates or the physical improvements will most likely be torn down before the defects liability period expires. Take 'Thomas King House' for example; a typical 1960's sixteen storey concrete tower block in the Hillfields area of Coventry; for those of you that don't know Coventry, it's fair to say that this was one of the most deprived and neglected areas of Coventry. Twelve months ago, Thomas King House was not of the standard we strive for and it was a block with a great deal of social problems illustrated by a high turnover in tenancies and a high vacancy level. It was clear from consultation with residents that they did not feel safe and securely housed in this block and it was critical to address those concerns through the £3.5m block refurbishment that was completed in June 2012. The finished results are stunning and I firmly believe that Thomas King House will serve as an exemplar in high-rise refurbishment not just for WM Housing Group but also for other registered providers. So having said all that... what has WM Housing done that is so different and how does it protect the £3.5m investment?

As indicated earlier, we adopted a two-pronged attack to deal with the social and physical factors. In terms of the social issues surrounding high-rise blocks, I am a great fan of Oscar Newman's 'Defensible Space' theory ever since reading his landmark book. Oscar Newman was a New York City planner who developed his theory of social control and crime prevention around high-rise blocks in the early 1970's. Though often confined to history the basic principles still hold as good now as they always did and I wrote the work specification for Thomas king House with those principles very much in mind. In the 1970's America was decades ahead of the UK in terms of high rise developments, and Newman in particular, understood the reasons for high crime levels around high rise blocks and formulated his own design guidelines for creating defensible space. There are five basic principles for creating defensible space and whilst I could not adopt them all, I did adopt the principles that could pragmatically be applied to Thomas King House; they were...

1. 'The territorial definition of space in residential developments to reflect the zone of influence of specific inhabitants.' In real terms, this meant clearly defining the hierarchy of space to define public, semi public and private areas. Externally we have used a combination of fencing, landscaping and colored paving to ensure the external public and semi public areas are clearly defined. There are gates to access the area to the front entrance foyer; these are not locked but the intention is to create a psychological rather than physical barrier. We have also created a private landscaped garden to the front of the block to heighten the sense of resident ownership and pride in where they live because if you can give residents pride in their homes then you create a watchful environment. Creating this sense of territorialism is a key principle.

2. Image, or the capacity of the physical design to impart a sense of security. The design of the entrance plaza and in particular the new entrance foyer and access control system was crucial in achieving this aim. I designed the entrance foyer  to incorporate two doors with electronic locks and the foyer is large enough to catch 'tailgaters' on camera before they can tailgate through the second locked door. Additional cameras all linked back to a central control room have further heightened the sense of security as has the installation of a barrier controlled car park. One aspect of the physical design often forgotten is the choice of materials or maybe it is more appropriate to state that material choices are often ill conceived. What immediately strikes you on visiting Thomas King House is that this is not your typical social housing refurbishment, it looks like a high-end private refurbishment project and the material choices were deliberately made to achieve that outcome. There is a view that you must choose unbreakable materials on our toughest estates and these are seen as sensible choices based on pragmatic experience. The problem with this approach is that design and aesthetics are only a secondary consideration, if in fact considered at all. Forget the aesthetics and you can forget creating a sense of pride. The other issue is that we now know that if you install something for no other reason than it is 'indestructible' then I'll guarantee there will be someone who comes along to test the claim, usually with great success.

Moving on from defensible space, the physical improvements to the block are more obvious and again we focused on maximizing the quality of fittings and improving the layouts to individual flats. All 128 flats and communal areas were fully refurbished. I will not go into all the technical challenges in delivering a high-rise refurbishment; there are many, but I believe there is no point in physically improving our buildings unless we improve the surrounding estate. The estate improvement work around Thomas king House and its neighbouring block, Hillfields House, have further raised the bar and given residents a sense of pride in where they live. The external landscaping and private garden at Thomas King House added circa £20k onto the total project cost and even on a £3.5m project, there are many organizations that would ignore these finishing touches arguing that with £20k they could carry out more property improvements elsewhere. This is an incredibly short sighted view because the sense or ownership and pride created in lifting estates to this standard is what really protects the investment  in the building fabric and reduces ongoing maintenance costs; crucially, the investment is protected by the residents themselves.

Post delivery we can discuss housing management’s role in protecting the investment and they absolutely have a part to play but as a Building Surveyor and practitioner, I would state that the key to success lies in adopting a holistic design process. We simplify future building and estate management by broadening our understanding beyond the technical requirements of building refurbishment.

Follow this link to view before and after pictures that will add some context to this article:

Thomas King House Refurbishment Photographs

ITV News arrtice relating to the project

Joe Malone BSc(Hons) ICIOB

Group Investment Programme Manager

Information/opinions posted on this site are the personal views of the author and should not be relied upon by any person or any third party without first seeking further professional advice. Also, please scroll down and read the copyright notice at the end of the blog.

Property/Land Development - Do Your Homework! - The Value of Desktop Studies

In the very early stages of a project, whether acquisition or development, a great deal of freely available information can be obtained to help to decide whether or not it would be worthwhile progressing to the next stage.



Source: http://www.the-self-build-guide.co.uk/

The internet is an invaluable resource for property and construction professionals and there is a great deal of information that is freely available to anyone who knows where to look.  If you are buying or selling property or giving advice to a client in respect of a particular building or indeed any construction project, there is a whole host of free ‘desktop’ information that can be attained without leaving the comfort of your office, or your home.
Over the last month we have had unprecedented rainfall in the UK making the hosepipe bans issued by numerous water authorities a few months ago seem ridiculous.  The result of all this rain however, is rivers bursting their bank and the Environment Agency issuing flood warning and alerts up and down the country.  A visit to the Environment Agency Website, provides access to their flood map, which details information relating to flooding around rivers and the sea, by simply inputting a postcode.  This information is free to access and can provide an indication of whether flooding may be an issue, and if so lead to more extensive investigations. Given the disruption, cost implications and difficulties with insuring properties at risk of flooding, this is a simple way of making an initial assessment at a very early stage.

When inspecting a building or a site it is also fundamentally important to investigate what is going on around the site and in the immediate vicinity, and to not just focus on the building or site itself.   Imagine a scenario where you complete an inspection and you fail to identify that that the neighbouring land, with the unspoilt, idyllic rural views has planning permission for a new housing estate, or your neighbour is about to start construction of a side and rear extension which will abut your boundary.  Nowadays, most local authorities publish planning applications on line, which are freely accessible by anyone.  There is also the opportunity for comments on individual applications during the consultation period. This type of investigation followed up by a phone call to the planning officer if necessary, can uncover important information that could be the determining factor on whether a client may which to proceed or not. Failing to establish this information could result in a potential negligence claim if the client can prove that they have acted on your advice and subsequently suffered a loss!  The local authority will also provide you with advice on historic planning and building regulations applications if requested.

Another useful tool that has become prominent over the last few years is on line mapping. Google Maps, is an exceptionally powerful free on line resource.  Prior to undertaking an inspection of a building I would use Google maps as a navigator (to find find out where I was going), as a locator (you can use satellite view to zoom in and out to see what is in the surrounding areas including neighbouring land and buildings and to look at roof configurations), and also as walk through (using street view allows you to 'take a walk' outside and around the building where you can see neighbouring buildings, roads, and other  interesting details and information.  This simple and free method of on line research can be used for example by house hunters to decide if they want to view a potential home, or indeed not waste there time and focus on others.  This is particularly useful for those looking for houses in areas that may be some distance from their current abode. A note of caution however, is that Google Maps is not 'real time'.  The images that you view may be a number of years old, however, as long as you appreciate this, you can still obtain some really useful information.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) provide a free on line map which indicates concentration levels of radon throughout the UK. Radon is a colourless, odourless, tasteless, naturally occurring, radioactive noble gas and is considered to be a health hazard if HPA threshold levels of 200 becquerels per cubic metre of air in homes is exceeded. It would therefore make sense to make use of this free online resource to establish if radon is something that may require further consideration.

Professional advisors will undertake thorough investigations when advising clients and will utilise some of the free resources discussed above in addition to other investigations such as location of services, land registration searches, mining history, ecological surveys, and numerous others that will demand a small fee.  In the very early stages of a project, whether acquisition or development, a great deal of freely available information can be obtained to help to decide whether or not it would be worthwhile progressing to the next stage, and at what point it is necessary to appoint professional advisors.  You will require professional advisers to find and interpret all sorts of other information as an acquisition or project progresses, however you do not need to be professionally qualified to access this free information, it is just knowing where to look.

I am sure that readers of this article from outside the UK will be able to find similar freely available information in their country of origin, by undertaking a small amount of Internet based research.

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and colleagues who you think would be interested

Information/opinions posted on this site are the personal views of the author and should not be relied upon by any person or any third party without first seeking further professional advice. Also, please scroll down and read the copyright notice at the end of the blog.