The trade should be ringing with the sound of exploding myths this week.
Close on 20 years ago the UK timber frame sector was hit by the World in Action episode uncovering shoddy practices on the building site from hell. The houses were so poorly made, you half expected a slow motion sequence of them collapsing round the builders’ ears.
The root of the problem was poor specification and site practice. But what stuck in viewers’ minds was that the houses were timber frame. Overnight the industry as a whole was tarred with the same brush as that dodgy site. The myth that timber frame was a second rate building method was created.
It’s taken nearly two decades of marketing, big strides in timber technology, and the Egan report’s recommendations on modular construction, but it does seem that times are now a’changing. The latest good news is a Timber Frame Industry Association survey of mortgage lenders. It found that the majors now have no problem providing mortgages for timberframe buildings. The Abbey National even said they regard them as ‘conventional’. In mortgage lenders’ parlance, apparently, that’s a real compliment!
But, while the myth that timber frame has inherent problems goes sky high, there are still plenty of others about timber generally that need a stick of dynamite. For instance, some mortgage lenders remain wary about timber cladding. And a recent article about a PVCu cladding company in The Manufacturer stated that timber inevitably rotted, warped and split. Most alarming was the fact that this was evidently the view of the journalist, not propaganda from the PVCu business.
In the week that the Wood for Good TV advert went on air, it’s clear that all of us in, or associated with the timber trade still have some explaining to do.
