Posi-Joists from Palgrave Brown, the £66 million UK timber engineering company, have featured on Channel 4’s popular Grand Designs TV show in a £725,000 project in Bristol known as the Sugar Cube house.

Martin Pease, a commercial architect, designed his ‘sugar cube’ open plan dream home for his wife Katherine, two children and two dogs, with everything in white. The steel and timber frame project was completed on budget – land costs of £425,000 and build costs of £350,000 – and with a rapid build time of just under a month.

Unusually, due to the nature of the design, Posi-Joists were incorporated placed vertically as well as horizontally for the floor and roof support and Palgrave Brown designers assisted with the design and unusual application of the Posi-Joists.

Dave Atkins, product manager for Posi-Joist at Palgrave Brown, comments: “The Sugar Cube is a great project to demonstrate the product’s versatility, and we are delighted that Palgrave Brown’s design service was able to give the customer the design flexibility he wanted.”

Exeter-based Westructure Timber Frame (01392 411211, www.westructure.co.uk) used Martin’s ideas and design to produce detailed drawings and a CAD 3D image to take in the structural, environmental and conceptual requirements and specified Posi-Joists. Peter Doman, managing director at Westructure, explains: “This was the first time we’d used Posi-Joists in vertical alignment. It meant we could have large ceilinged rooms as well as fulfil Martin’s vision of wide open spaces.”

The highly-insulated Sugar Cube four-bedroomed home is virtually all open plan, and half the ground floor space has double height ceilings. To add to the light and spacious feel, the house also features a full height glass wall overlooking the garden.

The Posi-Joist system, available from Palgrave Brown, combines timber and a Posi-Strut steel web which means it can span far greater distances than alternative products. Because the Posi-Joist also eliminates the need for load bearing intermediate walls it is ideal for a variety of internal room layouts, giving design flexibility, while its fixing surface makes for a truly quiet floor.

The Posi-Joist, which is both lightweight and strong, is easy to fit with trimmable ends and its open web design makes it ideal for discreetly installing services without the need for sawing gaps. Palgrave Brown, with 17 national network sites, has Posi-Joist manufacturing capacity and Posi-Joist designers at its branches in Widnes, Yeovil and Boston, as well as a sales and central design office at the Nuneaton office.

The Posi-Joist, which is both lightweight and strong, is easy to fit with trimmable ends and its open web design makes it ideal for discreetly installing services without the need for sawing gaps. Palgrave Brown, with 17 national network sites, has Posi-Joist manufacturing capacity and Posi-Joist designers at its branches in Widnes, Yeovil and Boston, as well as a sales and central design office at the Nuneaton office.

For further information about the Sugar Cube project, visit www.channel4.com/4homes

PALGRAVE BROWN IS QUICK ON THE DRAW IN THE DEEP SOUTH

Palgrave Brown, the £66 million UK timber engineering company, has helped a Southampton developer achieve a build time of just 14 weeks for eight flats, using the Palgrave Brown SIPS building system.

The development stands on a brownfield site surrounded by gardens on all sides, close to Southampton Water. There were unsightly derelict warehouses and garages there previously, but developer Wheatshield Ltd has used the space to create a landscaped development of eight one-bedroom homes, cleverly designed to look like four houses.

Palgrave Brown worked closely with Wheatshield on the specification of materials, and supplied a comprehensive suite of products including roof trusses, spandrel panels, flooring and TJI joists, staircases, and all internal walls as well as the SIPS system for the first-time-buyer development.

Wheatshield director Scott Pinnick comments, “Even though first fix was delayed by the weather during the wettest summer on record, once the development was out of the ground, we were really pleased with the speed of the build. The weatherproof SIPS envelope meant that work could continue, no matter what.”

Garry Dyke, Palgrave Brown’s national product manager for the SIPS system, explains, “On this project the customer really received the benefit of the integrated building system offered by Palgrave Brown. We were able to deliver each precision-designed element of the SIPS system and other timber products at exactly the right time for the whole of the build, meaning that delays were minimised.”

What’s more, the exceptional air tightness and high thermal performance of the SIPS system means that the developer had no worries about Part L compliance. “We were particularly impressed with how easily the components slotted together,” comments Scott Pinnick. “The precision of the engineering made airtight installation really straightforward.”

In fact, Wheatshield is so pleased with the SIPS system that it has now placed an order to use the system for another 14 dwellings in a high-spec development overlooking Southampton Water. That’s real southern exposure!

CONSCIOUS CONSERVATION WITH PALGRAVE BROWN

Palgrave Brown, the £66 million UK timber engineering company, has been helping Attridge Developments to add the finishing touches to a 12-month development of a local landmark in the centre of Market Harborough in Leicestershire.

The development will see the former Symington Coffee Mills Factory converted into four-storey upmarket apartments with an additional further conversion of three regency town houses into six duplex luxury apartments.  And, as the building has local historical significance and merit within the town, the local authority conservation officer has been taking a keen interest in the redevelopment of the site.

Providing the internal staircases, Palgrave Brown has had to work closely with Attridge Developments in order to ensure that any spindles and handrails replicate the original look of the industrial building.  Jeff Gaught, area sales manager at Palgrave Brown, said, “Because of the historical significance of the building, it was essential that any internal fixtures and fittings were produced as closely to the original as possible.”

Providing the staircase for the factory site meant Attridge had to remove any existing spindles and rails in order to provide Palgrave Brown with a sample from which to work the design.  Using the joinery centre at Marchington the new timber was machined into the correct shape and size in order to satisfy the requirements of the conservation officer.

Jeff continued, “Modern day spindles and handrails are usually turned and shaped and fairly intricate.  To fit in with the necessary industrial design, we needed to provide a more minimalist and pure feel, with straight spindles and cleanly designed handrails.  In addition the size and fit of the staircases needed to fit exactly into the spaces previously occupied by the original destroyed by years of neglect.  Intricate measurement and design was needed to ensure that the new staircases matched the exact tolerances to fit into the existing apertures of the stairwells.”

Along with careful consideration of internal fixtures and fittings, expert consultations were necessary to restore the outside façade as closely as possible to the Nineteenth Century original.  This involved careful examinations of early plans and pictures alongside consideration of architectural and historical reports of the approximately two-acre site. 

Tom McInerney, general manager of Attridge Developments said,  “This was an exciting project to work on taking into consideration the historical significance and architectural appreciation of the site. Working closely with our partners and with the assistance of the local authority conservation officer, we have successfully combined the heritage of the site with all the benefits of modern day living while restoring a Grade II listed building into apartments that are faithful to the regency period.”

To produce the stairwells a period of consultation was needed including site visits to examine what remained of the existing staircases and to obtain exact measurement and design details. “We have worked with Palgrave Brown before and were confident that the bespoke timber stairwell designs would be furnished exactly to what we needed and of a high quality.”

The apartments were completed in spring 2007.   

For further information about the site and the development visit www.attridgedevelopments.com

Palgrave Brown provided bespoke spindles and rails for the conversion of a period building.
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