Building a new timber frame garage

[Me!]

I'm looking at building a timber framed garage, and I was wondering if anyone can offer any personal experience of using one of the kit frames available please? I've just been looking at the info from Border Oak who seem to do a 3 bay design like the one I am hoping for. Has anyone ever tried one of these, or something similar from another company?

Thank you.

 

[Penners]

I had a timberframe garage built, the summer before last, but to my great regret Mrs P insisted "you're not doing it yourself, at your age".

It was a softwood frame, and no kit was involved. Just Chris and his lad, Chris, and later the roofer (whose name was Chris). Chris did virtually the whole job without an electric saw or power tools of any kind. Just his trusty saw and hammer.

"Don't loike 'lectric tools. Boi the toime Oi gid 'em plugged in, Oi coulda finished half the garage," he said. And considering he took less than two weeks to complete the entire frame, he wasn't far wrong.

My ramblings above do have a point. If you buy a kit, you have to pay someone else to do all the cutting and jointing. If you're halfway competent with a tape measure, a saw and a drill (electricity permitted!), there's no reason why you can't construct the garage yourself, just from sawn green oak (assuming oak is your preference). You'd certainly save a chunk-and-a-half of money that way, compare with Border Oak prices.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

The Border Oak ones are better than quite a lot of the other "off the peg" manufacturers. The problem with these outbuildings is that they may look "traditional" but they're almost always the traditions of Kent and Sussex. Next to a Suffolk farmhouse (or whatever) they look wrong. At least Border don't seem to go in for half-hips and gablets. Lots of nice thick shiny black tar over the timber would be an improvement too.

 

[Penners]

Lots of nice thick shiny black tar over the timber would be an improvement too.

My CO insisted on caps on the barge-boards, too. I was very glad he did - that little detail added significantly to the "rightness" of the building.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Penners, Where's that famous picture of your timber framed garage?--- give a chap some encouragement----

 

[Me!]

Yes, I like the idea of nice thick shiny black tar over the timber, that certainly fits with other buildings around here.
I had planned to use pantiles to match the house rather then the peg tiles shown in most of the pictures, and yes caps on the barge-boards is a detail I hadn't considered but would also match the house. How about sprocketed rafters as well, or wouldn't that be right for an outbuilding?
Gareth, yes I do own an old Suffolk farmhouse, in the very north of Suffolk. What stile would you suggest please for a garage? I'm happy to consider anything that would fit in with the area.
Penners, yes, I would love to build a green oak frame from scratch. I've lived here for 6 years now without a garage because I haven't been able to justify the time to build one whilst the roof is still leaking, and the windows need fixing, and the wiring is still dodgy, and the plumbing ....., and ..... I'm sure you get the idea! However, maybe with a few more toys, like a chain mortiser and some freshly sharpened chisels, I should just go for it......

 

[Penners]

Penners, Where's that famous picture of your timber framed garage?--- give a chap some encouragement----

Of course, Joss! Silly of me. The nation must be waiting with baited breath.

Me! will probably be more interested in the frame than in the finished item:

 

[Gareth Hughes]

Yes, I like the idea of nice thick shiny black tar over the timber, that certainly fits with other buildings around here.
I had planned to use pantiles to match the house rather then the peg tiles shown in most of the pictures, and yes caps on the barge-boards is a detail I hadn't considered but would also match the house. How about sprocketed rafters as well, or wouldn't that be right for an outbuilding?
Gareth, yes I do own an old Suffolk farmhouse, in the very north of Suffolk. What stile would you suggest please for a garage? I'm happy to consider anything that would fit in with the area.

You don't seem to need much advice from me, all the modifications from the standard that you suggest sound right for the area. I'd see if the roof could be a bit more steeply pitched too.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Gareth (serious question), what would you advise for those of us in North Wales who want an open faced barn with a couple of bays for cars and tractors, but who can't afford the time and cost of bulding a traditional local rubble-stone one? I quite fancied self-building something like the Border Oak ones one day...

 

[Me!]

Gareth and Penners, thank you for your help. Penners, do you have a picture of your garage frame from the side please? I'm interested to see what happens at eaves height on the gable end walls, and also how the purlins are braced?
Also, does anybody know of a good book or website that describes how to design and build oak frames? Not just pretty pictures of the finished product, but showing the best joints to use, and what the frame design considerations are? I've googled a few, but as always a recommendation is very welcome.

Thank you again.

 

[worms]

Gareth (serious question), what would you advise for those of us in North Wales who want an open faced barn with a couple of bays for cars and tractors, but who can't afford the time and cost of bulding a traditional local rubble-stone one? I quite fancied self-building something like the Border Oak ones one day...

Could you go for a simple open-fronted pole-barn, with soft-wood planking and sufficient roof overhang so that at a later stage (or perhaps slowly over time), you could buiild the rubble-stone walls? That way you could match the local variation on planking so that it could look traditional now and still go for an even more traditional look later?

 

[chuckey]

My brother built a "cart shed(?)" in the Suffolk style. He had the thing designed by a structural engineer. All very straight forward to build. One interesting point was that the rafters were covered in plywood before the tile battens were put on. This was to stop wind getting under the tiles and lifting them.

 

[Penners]

Penners, do you have a picture of your garage frame from the side please? I'm interested to see what happens at eaves height on the gable end walls, and also how the purlins are braced?

I hope this is of some help. As you can see, the roof was sprocketed, and the rear pitch was longer than the front - I adopted this approach in order to obtain the required floor area and roof pitch, without exceeding the CO's stipulated ridge height. The roof covering was pantiles with, as I said above, capped barge-boards. As you can, the CO's other stipulation was that the main doors had to be on a side wall (right-hand side of the picture), rather than a gable wall.

If you have some trouble working out how all the roof bracing works, join the club! We were away for a couple of days when Chris did it, and when we got back I said to him, "Good grief, Chris - did you knit that roof structure?"

He shrugged and said, "Oi put in some bracin' and 'at still moved abewt a bit, so Oi put in a bit more, and then some more. Oi jus' went on addin' it 'til the buildin' wuz rigid!"

As regards support for the purlins - as you can see, their ends rest on noggins between the studs in the gable walls.

I would happily offer to show the building, but I'm afraid we moved away from that house a few months ago.

Whereabouts in north Suffolk are you? We're near Bungay.

 

[MattJ]

I bought a 2-bay oak framed garage kit on Ebay. The original buyer had discovered it wouldn't fit sandwiched in between his house and his neighbours garage, but only after he'd paid for it. So I got it roughly half-priced and picked it up directly from the manufacturer. I rented a long truck with drop sides, but the longest beam damn near killed me when it came to unloading time.

I then stored it for 2 years, which was a mistake obviously as the green oak was significantly less green by the time I built it. It took two of us four days to build, and only one of the beams was significantly twisted, but we got around that with ratchet straps and big hammers. Building it wasn't difficult, everything fitted together very neatly. It's had a couple of coats of black creosote (which is only available to those who claim to be professional users...) which smells great and is wearing nicely.

The site for the garage was soaking wet, so I laid drains under the floor and ran them into a 900 litre tank, so I now have a self-replenishing water supply too which is great for car washing, etc. There's plenty of roof space too, which once I get around to putting rafters and a floor in will make some useful storage space, although it's not high enough to be used for anything else.

I must get around to tiling it though, it's had tar paper battened on to it for 18 months. That's a 2010 job.

Matt

 

[Me!]

Penners, I looked at that roof structure last night after a couple of glasses of wine, and I thought I must be seeing double! But no, I've just looked at it again, and it still looks the same! Thank you for the second picture, it does explain to me how most of it works. I think I'd better do a couple of drawings and see what the council say about planning permission before I get too excited about the whole idea though. We are near Eye, so not too far from Bungay.
MattJ, you've got me looking on ebay now as well. There are some for sale, but there are also lots of oak railway sleepers that just seem to be begging to be turned into a hefty oak frame!

 

[Jon Maine]

Careful with the quality of the oak sleepers, often it can be flawed.

 

[Penners]

I think I'd better do a couple of drawings and see what the council say about planning permission before I get too excited about the whole idea though.

Definitely. If you're planning anything other than a temporary structure, then you'll probably need PP.

However, so long as the floor area doesn't exceed 30 m^2, you shouldn't need Building Regs consent.

Eye is lovely. Maybe we'll bump into each other at Ridgeons in Diss, one day!

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Some friends of mine were viewing a house in Eye last week-- fell in love with it apparently, but have to wait to see if their purchase chain here sticks in place.
They did ask me what Eye is like to live in--

 

[Feltwell]

I think I'd better do a couple of drawings and see what the council say about planning permission before I get too excited about the whole idea though.

Definitely. If you're planning anything other than a temporary structure, then you'll probably need PP.

Not necessarily - the rules on permitted development mean that you can build some quite large structures without any PP. I had my own little fight with the planners about a garage earlier this year - I could have slapped an exempt building up if I'd really wanted to, but I wanted something more in keeping with the house, which meant a steeper pitch roof and going taller than permitted development allows. It is quite shocking what you can build without any permission though - see below!

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk is very useful -for garages, it says (although this is not aimed at listed buildings):-

Planning Permission
Rules governing outbuildings apply to sheds, greenhouses and garages as well as other ancillary garden buildings such as swimming pools, ponds, sauna cabins, kennels, enclosures (including tennis courts) and many other kinds of structure for a purpose incidental to the enjoyment of the dwellinghouse.

Other rules relate to the installation of a satellite dish, the erection of a new dwelling or the erection or provision of fuel storage tanks.

Under new regulations that came into effect on 1 October 2008 outbuildings are considered to be permitted development, not needing planning permission, subject to the following limits and conditions:

No outbuilding on land forward of a wall forming the principal elevation.
Outbuildings and garages to be single storey with maximum eaves height of 2.5 metres and maximum overall height of four metres with a dual pitched roof or three metres for any other roof.
Maximum height of 2.5 metres in the case of a building, enclosure or container within two metres of a boundary of the curtilage of the dwellinghouse.
No verandas, balconies or raised platforms.
No more than half the area of land around the "original house"* would be covered by additions or other buildings.
In National Parks, the Broads, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and World Heritage Sites the maximum area to be covered by buildings, enclosures, containers and pools more than 20 metres from house to be limited to 10 square metres.
On designated land* buildings, enclosures, containers and pools at the side of properties will require planning permission.
Within the curtilage of listed buildings any outbuilding will require planning permission.


*The term "original house" means the house as it was first built or as it stood on 1 July 1948 (if it was built before that date). Although you may not have built an extension to the house, a previous owner may have done so.

*Designated land includes national parks and the Broads, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, conservation areas and World Heritage Sites.

Please note: the permitted development allowances described here apply to houses not flats, maisonettes or other buildings. View guidance on flats and maisonettes here.

 

[Penners]

Thanks for clarifying that, Feltwell. I confess that I haven't yet got my eye in on the "permitted development" thing.

However, if there's any doubt on the matter, I still think that Me! would be best at least to have a quick word with his Planning Officer.