Big J

It wouldn't be my ability to build homes, it would be my wife and her colleagues. I'm just an enthusiastic amateur. There is a business angle for offering superior, affordable housing that is ecologically sound. It will be much easier to obtain planning permission, much easier to persuade local communities to support new developments like this, and whilst the gross profit on each development is lower, the hassle factor should be seriously reduced, resulting in a lot of saved time, and therefore money. I am surprised (genuinely) that the big builders continue on the line of building such awful housing, knowing how unpopular it is. They try to persuade us that that is what we want, rather than asking us. As regards countryside space, it's a much longer conversation, but firstly, there is plenty of space. Devon, for instance, has 1.4 acres for every man, woman and child here. Most counties are a little more densely populated, but not significantly so. To make better use of space, we could consider the construction of low rise apartment blocks. We stayed with friends in Uppsala in Sweden many years ago in a lovely, spacious city centre flat which was part of a small block that encircled a communal garden and play area for the kids. It was genuinely a great place to live. We are very much focused on carving up our land so that each man has his castle. 2 reception rooms, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, garage, deck and garden. If we were more flexible about the way that we considered living, we could have a lot more for less of a financial and ecological cost. Back when I was younger and more studious, we went to see a chap called Alain de Botton at the Book Festival in Edinburgh. He'd written a book called the Architecture of Happiness, which he talked about. He later did a Channel 4 series called The Perfect Home, which was based on the book and explored some of the ideas in it. Very interesting stuff, and goes some way to explain how we could be doing a lot more with our built environment.

Improving the quality of our housing stock is one of the most significant ways that the UK can improve it's environmental footprint. So, not only the running costs over the building's lifespan, but the embodied energy in it's construction, and how easy it is to recycle at the end of it's lifespan. So using methods such as straw bale (grown locally) with timber frame (grown locally) in conjunction perhaps with box profile steel roofs (used widely in northern climes, and recyclable), lime render, clay plaster and locally sourced timber cladding, you can hugely reduce the CO2 cost of the building, and ensure that the construction is inexpensive, and the recycling at the end of the building's life, simple. I've always thought that the public in the UK need to take a bit more control over their house building. Very few people are happy with the direction that building companies have been going with the construction of new housing stock, or indeed the planning laws that govern them. We need to use the example that many of our European neighbours exhibit with regards to self build. I don't mean literally building it yourself, but rather the whole system needs to be much more straightforward for normal families to commission their own house builds, getting exactly what they want and need, rather than what is prescribed to them by the likes of Barratt, Wimpy and Persimmon.

Population 42m in 1911, 66m now. A little way off doubling. Without immigration, we'd be population decline at this stage, with a birthrate of 1.8 babies per woman. As such, immigration is required to ensure we don't fall into population decline. Net immigration has averaged about 150000 per year since the mid-70s, so it only responsible for a total of about 7.5m of population increase in the past 50 years. That's another 3 million households. The demographic change in the makeup of households (3.3 to 2.4 people per household) over that same time period (had the population remained static at 56m) would require an additional 6.4m houses. So social changes in trends regarding cohabitation are responsible for more than twice the demand on the housing market than immigration. Taking into account the population increase, the UK required just under 17m houses in 1971 as opposed to 27.5m now.

The census data shows that from 1911 to 2011, the average size of a household declined from 4.3 to 2.4 with the decline steady inbetween. On that basis, you'd need almost twice as many houses to accommodate the same number of people. http://www.lse.ac.uk/social-policy/Assets/Documents/bsps/events/Explaining-changes-in-family-size.pdf

Yes, immigration does add to the pressure, but you're conflating it with larger issues. The changing nature of how family units are made up, as well as longer life expectancy, is a far greater strain on housing stock. If there is a plus, with the ongoing demise of the high street, there will be plenty of potential new accommodation that could be converted from empty commercial lets.

And people are living longer, staying single for longer before getting hitched and there is an increasing instance of second homes in rural areas. All issued that are more significant than immigration.

Immigration is not the main issue when it comes to housing shortages. Dissolution of family units, resulting in more people living in smaller groups or singularly is the primary pressure on housing stock. Couple that with a burgeoning industry of buy to let and you've limited options for first time buyers.

Form at the expense of function I guess. You can have both.

All the best for your operation.

It's absolutely criminal, from start to finish. The planners are only keen to work with larger firms that they know. A friend who built his house near Aviemore had the planning officer admit as much. Then the cost of the land is hugely and artificially inflated. Why does building land cost £2-4k per square metre? It's certainly not worth that. Then, the houses are built down to a cost rather than up to a standard. Would anyone actually choose to have a loft space that is completely unusable? As well as the latticework of minute timbers used to form the framework for the roof (which is a cost saving of a couple hundred quid, if that), they often no longer rate the rafters to take a person's weight. Then, due to the ridiculous cost of land and the developer's ruthless pursuit of profit, they pack them in at least 10 to the acre (including roads and verges) and sell at nearly 50% profit. It's absolutely scandalous. Our plan in a few years is to start a firm building small batches of sustainable, affordable houses in developments in the villages around where we live. There is a need for new housing (that is irrefutable) but it doesn't need to be so bad. Just 4 or 5 houses in a group, sympathetically designed to complement the local environment and surroundings, built with at least 20% larger rooms(we build the smallest houses in Europe), and built to a standard so that it's warm in winter, cool in summer, using materials that don't off-gas, aggravate and cause asthma and other allergies. Then put them on plots large enough so that you actually have a garden suitable for a family, and lay them out so that you're not playing tetris when trying to park your car. Then, instead of a 50% profit margin, go 25% meaning that the houses are just as affordable as the shitboxes from Persimmon. You'd have to put a covenant on them so that when resold the value can only increase by the same percentage as the overall housing market price rise. This would prevent profiteering and keep them affordable in the long term. This kind of localised approach to new housing would mean (more broadly) that houses are built by local firms that care about their community, the people that live in their houses and the long term sustainability of the developments, rather than just the profit.

I should have clarified that thermal efficiency also includes airtightness. My wife's practice did a school up in the Western Highlands. They used a German building method called Brettstapel (low-grade softwood lamellae held together by hardwood dowels, forming structural walls) which is inherently airtight. The challenge comes after with the fit out. As it happened, the airtightness achieved was superb (I went to the test) and the chap testing it said he'd only seen values like that on underground buildings. Now, despite it being in a pretty harsh climate, it requires heating only on Monday mornings and the heat from the kids is sufficient to heat it for the remainder of the week. It has a clever layout for the windows to ensure good air circulation and it's a very healthy place to be, as well as using very little energy.

Micro-renewables have not been economically viable until extremely recently. The payback period on solar is now 6-8 years but it was the case until a few years ago that the installation cost of the panels would only be recouped at the point where the performance dropped significantly. I am not saying do not install solar panels, but I am saying that improved heat efficiency is a much more cost-effective way of conserving energy and therefore reducing the environmental footprint of the house. It's worth remembering that on average, energy usage for heating is almost 4 times higher per household than electricity usage. I would strongly advise not getting me started on the absolutely terrible, unforgivably poor quality of new building in this country. It's probably my number one subject to get on my soapbox about. My wife is an architect specialising in sustainable design and consults with other architects, advising them on the topic. My grandfather was also an architect, so it's been a lifelong passion. We have an eventual plan to start a sustainable building company to (on a very local level) take on the likes of Persimmon, Barratt etc to build low cost, high-quality affordable homes for local families whose only choice at present is an overpriced shitty little rabbit hutch, which is too hot in summer, too cold in winter and so close to the neighbours that you can hear them fart. Stuff that. People need a bit of space, and I feel that there is a rising wave of hostility towards these large-scale builders who shamelessly make very almost 50% profit on every turd of a house they sell. Bugger.....I got on my soapbox! ?

It's more cost effective to spend the money on energy conservation, rather than energy generation. New houses are still built to embarrassingly poor (insulation) standards, and focusing on something like solar panels rather than energy efficiency is like focusing on getting more fuel for your car when there is a leak in the tank.

I'm glad you're able to shift it. My customers always wanted elm and oak and second to that, ash.

I've gone right off hardwoods in recent years, especially since returning to forestry. Slow growing, awkward to fell, doubly awkward to extract and riddled with quality issues. I also feel that the figure in larch, cedar, douglas and many of the other softwoods is at least as pretty as your run of the mill hardwood.

Like swinny says, just not in fashion. If you've a large batch of clean, white beech then there is potential for selling for large scale furniture production (where uniformity is valued) but there is no craft market for it except for folk like Steve (7thdevil) who turn skittles and other such things. For the last few years with my sawmill, I made the policy never to pay for beech. I didn't have a shortage of oversized lumps from domestic sites where I just paid for haulage.

Message sent

You were honestly my only regular beech customer. Cutting 800-1000 tonnes a year and less than 1% of it was beech.

Might be worth speaking to Harold Taylor. Top chap and was my regular haulier when I was in Scotland. His yard is in Forfar, but he lives in Insch and covers a lot of Scotland. Has a strong crane with a 4t lift on it, so could sort you out with some big lumps. I can PM you his number. Have to ask why you'd want beech? Never found a demand for it.

I think you're realistically just a bit too far north for it to be economical. DF is going to be nudging £100/t delivered in for 3.7s and a bit more for the 4.9s

I don't know if you've been up, but I saw Willie Dobie's in action at his sawmill (Abbey Timber) at Abbey St Bathans in SE Scotland. Fast and consistent mill. We've a profusion of douglas fir at the moment if it's of any use, and a large volume of good larch coming later in the year.

Very nice mills are Mebors. Welcome to the forum

Not quite on that scale, but some large elm and larch we did a few years back. Sorry for the poor quality pics.

It's not. It's very quick to get into position. You then winch 5-8 trees to one point (radio winch) creating a stack large enough to fill the forwarder. You're never winching more than 20m, and it's a fast winch. 12-15 trees per hour, minimum. Once you've a large enough stack, move up the rack to the start of the felled trees and repeat. Compared to hand felling, it's more than twice as quick (per tonne, per man), the presentation is far better for forwarding and it's much less physically demanding for the cutters as there is zero stacking. Again, I appreciate your experience in the matter, but the low impact angle is a niche of forestry that isn't ever going to be most economically viable, but for a great many landowners (especially in these parts) it's of more importance than financial return. It is still viable, and we can break even on first thinnings with a much, much lower impact on the stand (as well as a tidier finish).

The machine is small enough and manoeuvrable enough to be able to turn 90 degrees to the felled line within the rack. It's only 4m long and 1.45m wide. So, you drive into the rack, turn 90 degrees (or as close to that as you need to) and process away. No problemo.