Social Housing

Ecoframes have a vast amount of experience in providing timber frame solutions for the Social Housing market, our unique position of providing locally sourced structural timber for our frames sets us apart from the rest of the timber frame industry in England and Wales.

Timber Frame is the success story of the house building industry.
While the housing industry as a whole has struggled to meet demand over recent years, Timber Frame has shown consistent growth. Far from being a novel way of building, in most parts of the developed world Timber Frame is the norm, an engineered and proven system. Over 70% of the people of the developed world live in Timber Frame housing. In the USA and Canada it accounts for 90% of low-rise buildings, while in Scotland 55% of new houses are built this way.

Timber Frame is not just suitable for low-rise domestic buildings; there is considerable growth in the construction of medium-rise buildings of up to at least six storey for apartments and social housing, while it is also being used for schools and offices, hotels, student accommodation, sports and leisure centres and healthcare facilities.

It is widely accepted, post Egan Report, that building practices have to change; that ways must be found to re-skill, improve productivity, reduce the impact of development on the environment, improve quality and provide higher standards for homeowners.
Off-site fabrication is the way to achieve this change: creating as much of a building as possible in a controlled environment, leaving as little as possible to the vagaries of the weather and on-site labour skills.

Ecoframes are part of this revolution, investing in new plant and integrating computer design, engineering and manufacturing systems to produce the frame of a complete house quickly and accurately, increasing the predictability and pace of building programmes. Instead of daily spiralling subcontractor costs, Ecoframes Timber frame solutions offer a fixed price, fixed term solution for the supply and erection of the superstructure of a building.

Environmental Responsibility.

The pressure to adopt environmentally friendly measures is becoming more intense, with the Government demanding that all partners in the building industry contribute to reducing the impact of development on CO2 emissions.
Timber Frame’s environmental credentials and fast-track production technique can easily rise to the challenges of the Code for Sustainable Homes (CfSH)

There is no more environmentally friendly way to build:
• Wood is renewable; Our policy of sourcing locally further reduces our Carbon Footprint.
• Wood is effectively a carbon-neutral material: growing trees absorb carbon and produce oxygen; the carbon is stored for the life of the tree and the building; at the end of its usable life the wood can be burned for energy as a substitute for fossil fuel.
• Wood has low embodied energy: strength for strength, concrete uses 5 times, and steel 6 times, more energy to produce than wood
• This low embodied energy, plus excellent insulation properties, helps reduce CO2 emissions throughout the life of a building.

The four key drivers for Local Authorities and Housing Associations:
1. Low cost construction
2. Low maintenance costs
3. Low running costs
4. Low impact on the environment
Ecoframes Timber frame solutions answers all these needs!