Straw Bail Frame.

In October 2009 we were approached by Conker conservation, a specialist planning consultant in the field of environmentally friendly building. They were involved in a project which included the recycling of timbers formally used as docks and moorings in the east end of London, which the client had obtained some years earlier with a view to using them in an eco friendly build. They were looking for a company to resaw the large 350mm square 11mtr long Douglas Fir bulks into the correct sizes required for the build.

Because Norton timber has one of the largest band saw mills in the south of England, able to handle tree lengths exceeding 11 mtr's and 1mtr diameter, we were able to not only offer a frame building service but also the facility to cut the timber to the desired size.

This gave us the edge over the competition and we won the contract to build the frame which was to comprise of a heavy timber main frame with straw bale walls and a soft wood truss framed roof structure.

The tricky elements in this frame were the need to create two frames in one, the first to deal with racking and stability and the second to give the straw bail wall builders a solid anchor point with which to compress the bails. A second challenge was that the whole frame was to sit on concrete pillars with heights ranging from a few inches to four feet, this was as a result of the site being on a bank. As you can see the end result worked very well and working with the architected and engineer the build went very smoothly and was raised on time.