With the design of Knights Park finalised and the factory production drawings signed off the production of the closed panel timber frame building in the factory in Germany started in earnest back at the beginning of November.
The off site manufacturing process provides a number of benefits over more traditional methods of construction, many of which ensure a holistic approach to sustainability for your building. Minimal waste is created during the off site construction of the timber frame panels and cassettes due to precision engineering by highly skilled operatives in factory conditions. What waste is created is reused or recycled generally within the factory environment without having to be transferred to external waste/recycling facilities. So this combined with our specification of sustainable materials which are used to fabricate the timber wall panelling and cassettes it is easy to create an eco building using the Streif German timber frame building system.
With the bulk of the production of the timber frame building completed, work on site kicked off in mid November with a view to completing the two storey 1500m²+ School by the Christmas break. However the great British weather has had other ideas.
Normally by this time of year the days are short, the weather is fairly settled and the temperature has dropped but we seem to be having a typical British autumn in December. The last few weeks has seen gale force winds most days interspersed with spells of heavy rain.
Due to the nature of off site manufacturing this bad weather has caused a few problems on site as we have been unable to lift the timber wall panels and cassettes into place due to the high winds and our lorries have also been delayed in crossing the channel due to stormy seas and disrupted ferries therefore impacting the erection programme for Knights Park School.
To manage the build project efficiently the weather and wind speed are analysed daily by our site teams and the crane has a wind anemometer on its lifting arm. The maximum wind speed in which our site lifting operations can take place is 9.8 metres per second (approx. 22mph). This is actually quite a high wind especially for the South of England and it is certainly unusual to have consistent high winds like this on and off for a month.
However our site teams have persevered under pretty tough conditions and the closed panel timber frame building is, (as you can see from the photos below) progressing well. As we speak the timber wall panels for the first floor are being lifted into position and we are hoping for a good run up to the Christmas Break to get the programme back on track.
