A solution to our housing problems: home-grown timber homes

“Timber-rich homes could provide an answer to the housing crisis, and help the climate emergency.” [Neil Sunderland, Makar Homes]

“Our homes could be designed to be mass-manufactured and delivered with the precision required of modern energy standards, without the variable delivered quality that plagues conventional housing.”

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There are a lot of good examples in the UK of high-quality zero carbon affordable homes. A lot of these include building with the ultimate ‘green material’, that is building with wood. In particular, we seem to be seeing “the return of PRE-FAB homes” – as there are many environmental advantages to prefabs.

At the COP26 held in Glasgow a couple of years ago, the point was made that we could build a better world with wood – especially when it comes to alternatives to cement. And at Glasgow the COP26 House was on display – notable for using Scottish-grown timber, providing the case for home grown timber homes.

Today’s Escape to the Country took us to the Cairngorms and a visit to a company making sustainable, timber frame houses from locally sourced materials, before meeting the proud owners who live in one of them.

These are Natural Homes, Healthy Living from MAKAR, which “has delivered over 250 of the UK’s most innovative net zero ecological buildings and timber frame homes, using locally sourced natural materials and advanced off-site manufacturing”.

And Neil Sutherland, founder and director of MAKAR, writes in the National newspaper, looking at why Scotland’s timber could hold the key to solving the housing crisis:

THE Scottish Government has recently announced a housing emergency with many councils following suit. This measure, the seeming result of panic on the part of a range of interests, has prompted media with almost daily coverage. One interview began with the assumption that, with development inherently bad for the environment, how could building more homes square with the climate and nature emergency?

In many respects the negative assumption relating to conventional construction is correct. In Europe, 40% of global warming potential emissions are generated directly or indirectly by the built environment. It has been estimated that the average UK home contributes 8.1 metric tonnes of C02 per annum through the dependency on gas for space heating and grid electricity...

Never mind the emissions that come from our gas and oil boilers, every average speculative volume new house completed in the UK contributes 35 to 50 metric tonnes of C02 due to its “up-front” emissions relating to the materials employed and their resulting industrial processes...

Instead of emitting carbon while constructing and living in our homes, we need to capture this carbon, bring it down from the atmosphere by either natural or engineered approaches and do it fast. Natural options include restoration of peat bogs, increasing soil carbon and afforestation and engineered solutions include carbon capture and storage and wood in construction. We are clear that linking afforestation with wood in construction is a combined solution entirely suited to Scotland’s circumstances, a powerful win-win...

A study MAKAR carried out indicated the relative up-front embodied carbon of a four-person two-bed home to be around 26 tonnes, around half that of the average new UK home. Amazingly, such a progressive local timber-derived home was able to lock up 38 metric tonnes of sequestrated biogenic carbon; the new home when completed took down 12 tonnes of carbon and stored it. The full picture of ongoing operational emissions, and therefore running costs, are also startling. Spread over a year, your house could be comfortably heated at a cost of around £5 per week…

This was ten years ago, fast track to MAKAR 2.0 and the launch of our Natural Terrace Homes...

Ditching the fragmented on-site conventional route of building homes brick-by-brick, our homes could be designed to be mass-manufactured and delivered with the precision required of modern energy standards, without the variable delivered quality that plagues conventional housing. This is actually, and perhaps naturally, how many European countries handle their citizen’s housing needs. With the right change in attitude towards housing, we could all start living in the homes that both we and the climate deserve.

The question is whether South West England’s timber could hold the key to solving the housing crisis in these parts…