#Charred Timber Cladding Suppliers

[ecotimber3]

Embracing Nature: The Timeless Appeal of Charred Timber Cladding in Australia

Introduction: In the world of architectural design, the use of natural materials is often celebrated for its ability to create a harmonious connection between the built environment and the surrounding landscape. Charred timber cladding, also known as Shou Sugi Ban, is a traditional Japanese technique that has gained popularity in Australia for its unique aesthetic, durability, and sustainability. In this blog post, we'll explore the timeless appeal of charred timber cladding in Australia and its growing popularity among architects, builders, and homeowners.

Natural Beauty

Charred timber cladding is renowned for its striking appearance, characterized by a rich, deep black color with unique texture and grain patterns. The charring process involves carefully burning the surface of the wood to create a protective layer of char, which enhances the timber's natural beauty while also increasing its resistance to decay, insects, and fire. The result is a visually stunning facade that exudes warmth, character, and sophistication, making it a popular choice for both contemporary and traditional architectural styles.

Durability and Longevity

Beyond its aesthetic appeal, charred timber cladding offers exceptional durability and longevity, making it well-suited for Australia's diverse climate conditions. The charring process renders the wood more resistant to moisture, UV exposure, and rot, significantly extending its lifespan compared to untreated timber. This durability ensures that charred timber cladding requires minimal maintenance over time, saving homeowners time and money on repairs and replacements while maintaining its pristine appearance for decades to come.

Sustainability

Charred timber cladding is also valued for its sustainability credentials, aligning with Australia's growing focus on eco-friendly building practices. The charring process involves using controlled flames to burn the wood surface, which eliminates the need for chemical treatments or preservatives. Additionally, charred timber cladding is often sourced from responsibly managed forests or reclaimed wood sources, further reducing its environmental impact. As a renewable and biodegradable building material, charred timber cladding offers a sustainable alternative to traditional cladding materials, making it a popular choice for environmentally conscious homeowners and designers.

Versatility and Adaptability

Another key advantage of charred timber cladding is its versatility and adaptability to various architectural styles and design preferences. Whether used as a focal point on a contemporary facade or as a subtle accent on a traditional home, charred timber cladding adds a sense of warmth, texture, and visual interest to any project. Furthermore, charred timber cladding can be customized in terms of texture, finish, and color intensity to suit specific design requirements, allowing architects and designers to unleash their creativity and achieve their vision with ease.

Cultural Significance

In addition to its aesthetic and practical benefits, charred timber cladding holds cultural significance as a traditional Japanese building technique with centuries of history and craftsmanship behind it. By incorporating charred timber cladding into Australian architecture, designers pay homage to this ancient tradition while also embracing the timeless beauty and sustainability of natural materials.

Conclusion

In conclusion, charred timber cladding offers a compelling combination of natural beauty, durability, sustainability, and cultural significance that makes it a popular choice for architectural projects in Australia. Whether used in residential, commercial, or public spaces, charred timber cladding adds a touch of elegance and sophistication while enhancing the connection between the built environment and the natural landscape. As Australia continues to embrace sustainable building practices and celebrate the beauty of natural materials, charred timber cladding is poised to remain a timeless and enduring choice for generations to come.

[flamingwood4]

TIMBER MERCHANTS

Welcome to Flaming Wood, the greatest wooden Merchant in UK supplying a large variety of amazing home and European trees products. We function many sawmills inside the UK and we’ve additionally partnered up with mills throughout the world to deliver you the best variety of merchandise on the market. From Timber Cladding to Decking, Sleepers, Cladding, Oak flooring, Oak Doors, Garden Fencing, and tons more, we provide merchandise in more than a few profiles, sizes, and species. We are besides query your one-stop keep for all merchandise timber!

Here at Flaming Wood, one of the many matters that really makes us special to the market is that we have our very own in-house logistics service. We have our very own fleet of crane cars that allows us to supply all merchandise regardless of quantity, measurement, or size throughout the UK. Once you locate an order with us, we will make certain that it arrives with you in the most environment-friendly and instantaneous manner possible. So, take a seem thru our internet site and product range. We are assured you will discover the entirety you want and more!

[dandenongtimber]

Popularity Encourages Timber Suppliers to Indulge in Recycled and More Innovative Products

Some materials come and go in terms of trends and fashions, but timber is consistently popular for all manner of specifications in and around the home. This has motivated some timber suppliers in Melbourne to source the product. The older timber has more character and definition than a younger harvested timber. Furthermore, people today demand a recycled product for their home, from an environmental point of view.

Timber floorboards and decking are seemingly installed in every new home and renovation. Wooden railway sleepers are also highly popular though concrete sleepers are increasingly gaining employment in various countries worldwide owing to its high stability and small maintenance. Different varieties are widely used due to its various commercial and domestic uses. Many companies offer a vast range of timber supplies which are premium quality.

A range of charred timber products from multiple organizations offers environmentally friendly benefits and unique architectural possibilities that make it the right product for any project. They excel at bringing new and innovative timber products to the forefront of architectural, residential and commercial design.

Catering to the latest evolution in timber finishes, charred finishes of various companies come in a range of small standard designs, or custom-profile products specifically crafted for the project. Their latest innovation pushes the boundaries again with a stunning range of charred cladding options.

The huge demand for timber products worldwide has put significant strain on its natural resource and though there are systems in place to monitor and regulate forests; unscrupulous forces continue to illegally log valuable hardwood species for financial gain. This has motivated some timber suppliers to source recycled timber from existing building and construction sites – making use of a valuable source of hardwood timber that would have otherwise gone wasted.

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[mrstevenbushus]

Fitting the Rainscreen Cladding

One of the elements I love about the Education House design, which was drawn up by architect and Build It expert Opinder Liddar of Lapd Architects, is that it strikes a fantastic balance between clean contemporary lines and soft, textural finishes.

That’s partly down to the mix of external materials: particularly the crisp white render, timber cladding and characterful roof tiles.

Choosing the right cladding was always going to be crucial, then.

There are all manner of species and profiles to choose from – from the likes of Western red cedar through to the modern fad for charred woods. For the Build It House, we wanted something that would give us a blend of wow factor and durability, as well as fit with most self builders’ budgets. And we found it in Russwood’s Siberian larch.

A slow-grown, high-density timber, Siberian larch is one of the toughest softwoods around – with a typical lifespan of 50-100 years – making it perfect for external cladding. It’s easy to machine, too, so it’s available in a wide range of profiles.

We can’t wait for the scaffold to come down in a few weeks’ time so we can see the cladding in its full glory

Russwood offers an advanced option that’s factory-coated in SiOO:X, a water-based silicone treatment that helps to give that lovely weathered appearance at an accelerated rate. It’s a clever solution that prevents the differential weathering you sometimes see on more exposed elevations, beneath windows etc – although it does add to lead times (we needed to place our order about six weeks before we wanted the cladding on site).

Fitting the cladding

Russwood’s MD, John Russell, recommended a rainscreen format. This arrangement features narrow strips of timber (ours are 70mm wide) with a chamfer at the top and bottom to allow water to drip down the face.

We’re fixing it horizontally onto vertical battens (which will hold a breather membrane onto the ICF walls), with an 8mm gap between boards. This design encourages airflow behind the cladding to ensure any moisture that does penetrate evaporates effectively.

In total, Lapd estimated we needed 108m2 of cladding (including a 10% allowance for cuts and wastage), along with 51m of larch stop beads.

While we figured out the detail for the window reveals, our carpenter cracked on with fabricating as much of the secret-fix cladding as possible

Once the stud walls were done inside, Drewett & Hunt’s carpentry team shifted their focus to prepping for the cladding. Stage one was treating all the battens with a black exterior-grade paint, to hide them against the membrane and reinforce the shadow-gap effect.

They’re fixed at 400mm centres, with extra lengths where needed, such as at corners and some structural openings. We got this done before the renderers started because if you try to screw battens in afterwards you’re likely to end up with cracks and chips where the materials join. We’re trying two fixing techniques for the larch, to demonstrate the different effects you can achieve.

On the most visible elevations, we’re using FassendenClips, a secret-fix system that means you won’t see any screw or nail heads. This method simultaneously creates a tiny gap between the back of the board and the vertical baton, enhancing ventilation and the durability of the timber.

Russwood had a FaceTime call with Drewett & Hunt to run through the details of how it works. The results are crisp and sleek. Our chippy found it straightforward to use, but it was undoubtedly slower (with higher labour costs) than the more conventional method we’re using on a short stretch of cladding on the wall facing the neighbouring plot.

Here, we’ve gone for a KompeFix strip (flexible PVC) between battens and boards to aid ventilation, while the larch is fixed with special stainless steel screws that don’t need pre-drilling. Demonstrating the implications of these kind of choices is a big part of what we want to achieve with the Build It House.

Cladding: It’s all in the detail

At the design phase one of the Build It team visited Russwood’s showroom where they have an extensive range of options on display in sample panels and on buildings. It became very clear that they have huge depth of knowledge and there are far more decisions needed than we realised … so if you want a wow-factor look then making the journey is well worthwhile. Here are some of the elements we’ve decided on:

Precision Alignment  

We’ve probably not made it easy on our carpenter with the cladding – our design choices here really do require excellent attention to detail. For instance, on the rear elevation we need to have joints between the boards, as they’re not long enough to cover the area in one go. Rather than take the conventional approach of staggering those joints, we’ve opted to square them up beneath the edges of the windows. It’s not exactly difficult, and a competent DIYer could probably do it themselves to save money and free up labour elsewhere on the project, but everything needs to be fitted perfectly to get the right look.

Mitred corners

Similarly, at the corners you’d normally have a stop bead, but it turns out that’s not so easy to do if you haven’t planned it into an ICF build from the start. We can’t really fit these securely into the polystyrene as there isn’t an embedded fixing strip here, so for a little while we were a bit stumped about what to do. The solution – to mitre the one external corner we’re cladding – looks fantastic, but again needs a lot of care and attention to get right. On John’s recommendation, we’ve left a gap of 10mm between the mitred cuts on each elevation to get the best look.

Window reveals

How to finish the cladding around windows took considerably brainpower from everyone involved: our architect, the chippy, Kloeber as the window supplier, Russwood and the Build It team. There doesn’t appear to be a universal solution for this kind of detail that relies on widely-available materials; certainly not for a rainscreen cladding system where you need to maintain ventilation at the head of structural openings – but don’t want to just look straight up at a breather membrane and the ends of some black-painted battens. We knew we wanted to use a perforated closer that would water to escape, but couldn’t find anything of the right size. In the end, we came up with a solution that combines a thin strip of larch with a black metal grill above the windows; with the side reveals finished in larch.

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The Benefits of Prefab Homes

Prefabricated homes are hugely popular in Germany, Australia and the United States. However, they’ve only managed to corner a relatively small part of the UK housing market.

This is a shame because prefab houses offer big developers speedy construction, cost certainty and economies of scale. The government has clocked this and has been pushing for greater uptake in a bid to help solve the housing crisis.

But the fact is, the main group investing in prefab homes has been (you guessed it) self builders. And some of us don’t even realise we’ve technically gone prefab.

What is a prefab home?

If the idea of a prefab house fills you with dread, fear not. Times have moved on since the cheap and cheerful boxes that pervaded the mid-20th century.

Speed of delivery is still important. But modern offsite-manufactured homes are now about design flexibility, accuracy and quality control.

One thing that’s worth clarifying early on is that prefab is a broad church covering a range of options. It doesn’t necessarily mean craning in entire pre-finished rooms.

In fact, by far the most common route for self build projects is to engage a company that specialises in highly pre-manufactured closed panel timber frame.

Source it: Find more Hanse Haus projects in the Build It Directory

This is the type of product that’s come to our shores via the German package home suppliers, such as Baufritz, Hanse Haus and Meisterstueck. It’s something of a hybrid route, where much of the internal fit-out work is still carried out onsite.

Site operatives install a Hanse Haus internal wall panel, which has been manufactured with service channels and some plumbing infrastructure in place

With this kind of structural system, the company produce the wall and roof panels in the factory. They pre-cut the door and window openings and add insulation under controlled conditions.

All fairly basic stuff so far – but what sets the prefab versions apart is that a lot more of the work is done offsite.

“Our external wall panels will be fitted with doors, windows and ideally the cladding. Or at least as much of it as you can possibly put on in the factory,” says Robert Lumme from Baufritz.

Some suppliers can take things a stage further, with plasterboard pre-applied internally and sections of the services already run through the channels. This will save even more time on the ground; but Robert warns that going too far can be restrictive.

“We may pre-drill a few holes for sockets that we’re certain will be in a particular position. But we prefer to put the electrics, plumbing and heating in onsite. This is for the simple reason that people like to amend things once they see the house shell in reality,” he says.

The next step up is a fully prefab build – also called modular or volumetric constructions.

Large-scale wall panels are produced with speed and accuracy in the Baufritz factory

With this route you’re dealing with large, 3D building elements that could represent whole rooms or sections of building; sometimes with the services, internal fit-out and finishes already installed and commissioned. In some cases, companies can deliver entire homes in a matter of weeks.

The modular method is pretty rare for one-off houses as the level of factory manufacture makes for a high upfront cost; but it could make sense for some custom build or community self build schemes.

Interestingly, in terms of domestic projects modular construction is currently more frequent for extensions. This is perhaps because the ability to crane in an entire single-storey room or habitable loft pod can be useful in certain circumstances – such as where there’s tight access to terraces.

There are a number of firms specialising in this area, including Ecoqube and Moduloft.

Is prefab right for me?

If you’re looking for a high-quality bespoke scheme, then it could be the best option. But every project and every self builder is different.

Here are five key questions to consider when figuring out how to approach your project:

1. Can you have an individual design?

It’s a common myth that extensive levels of factory manufacture lead to more standardised architecture; in fact you can tailor your home to your  exact needs, both in terms of aesthetics and how it suits your lifestyle. Many firms put a real focus on high-quality design and construction; and a number of architects, including the likes of Ecospace, have moved into the arena.

Small Prefab Home Clad in Charred Larch

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Architect Guylee Simmonds designed the new building from the inside out. He based it on the needs of the artist and the scenic surroundings.

The end result is a highly bespoke space, which proves that prefab can be personal.

The key difference to the traditional route is that you need to think through all the details prior to manufacture. But you still get all the design control you would expect with a bespoke project.

“There is a lot of pre-planning, because the panels have to be drawn up in detail. They have to be made to exact millimetre-precise dimensions,” says Robert. “But we’re able to quite flexibly create very different shapes, sizes and styles of building.”

If you’re going all-out for a modular scheme, changing things on site is likely to be difficult. There’s slightly more flexibility with the closed-panel route; but it won’t come cheap. For instance, if you want to make a window bigger you’ll need to involve a structural engineer.

2. Do prefab homes last?

It’s a simple fact: the more work gets done in the factory, the more accurate the finished house will be. This can help underpin key areas for self builders, such as energy performance.

The post The Benefits of Prefab Homes appeared first on Build It.

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Groundworks & Timber Frame Completed

When he spotted an infill site near his home in Portobello, Edinburgh, architect John Kinsley decided it would be the ideal spot for a community self-build.

Following our last entry which focused on how the group secured finance for the project, this instalment focuses on how the scheme progressed from the groundworks phase to the erection of the cross laminated timber frame.

Unexpected delays

We commenced on site in mid-April 2015. The first task was to undertake repairs to the adjacent gable wall and chimney of the neighbouring property, which were in extremely poor condition and needed to be made structurally sound before we began piling.

Once we had started the works, however, it became apparent that the partition was in much worse condition than we’d expected. By the time we’d established a sound existing structure from which we could rebuild, and agreed a method of doing so with our structural engineer, the initial two-week programme for this portion of the works had lengthened significantly.

Unfortunately this impacted even more seriously on the overall build schedule. It pushed back the earliest possible date for the manufacture of the cross-laminated timber (CLT) frame to August when Egoin, our Spanish supplier, shut down.

So, with the CLT unable to be fabricated until September, we worked back from an install date in October and calculated that there was no benefit in starting the groundworks and piling until August. As a result, we were effectively looking at a winter build rather than a summer one. Not a good start!

The steel-reinforced groundworks

Breaking ground

Fortunately, once works started in earnest we made good progress. The site strip, piling and ground floor slab all ran smoothly and according to programme. We applied for permission to close the road in order to facilitate the delivery and erection of the CLT frame. The first sections arrived from Spain on 24th October.

Cross-laminated timber framing is a relatively new method of construction for the UK. Walls and floors are built up in layers of softwood timber that have been glued together in alternate directions, like giant pieces of plywood. The units are cut to size in Egoin’s factory in the Basque region of Spain, with openings for doors and windows already formed.

The sections can be up to 12m long by 3m high and are craned into position on site and screwed together with metal brackets. The onsite assembly of the CLT frame components were undertaken by a three-man team of joiners from Egoin.

The erected cross-laminated timber frame

Why timber frame?

Typically, a conventional structural system for a multi-storey residential unit like ours might be formed of a steel frame with concrete precast floor slabs, fireproof cladding and blockwork walls with plaster finishes.

The CLT frame provides all of those functions in one and can be installed very quickly – in our case it took less than two weeks. It is also sustainable and requires no wet trades to be on site. As the components are pre-engineered under factory-controlled conditions, it is highly accurate and facilitates highly airtight construction. External joints between sections of timber are sealed using airtight tape.

If you’re keen to see exactly how the timber frame was erected on site, check out this video:

The timber sections are oversized so that in the event of a fire, the outer layers will char while the inner sheet retains the strength to support the building. Our frame is – for now at least – the largest CLT structure in Scotland.

Swift progress

After nearly three years of visualising the project, it was a very emotional moment when the first pieces of the CLT frame finally arrived. To walk around the interiors of the flats for the first time, feeling the size of the spaces that had been formed was incredibly exciting. We also caught our first glimpse of the fantastic sea views we will have out across the Forth.

With the frame complete, we invited our Basque joiners around for a celebratory cross-cultural meal of haggis, chorizo stew and tortillas, musically accompanied by Gica on fiddle and Eneko on the guitar.

Since then, the project and its unusual method of construction have generated significant interest, and we’ve had lots of requests for site visits.

Thanks to the unseasonably good autumn weather, we were able to complete the CLT frame within two weeks. Following that, our next challenge was to get the building to wind and weathertight before conditions deteriorated with the onset of winter.

Article reference Groundworks & Timber Frame Completed