How I Started Building a House and Ended Up Building Software.
The story of how a gold-flake-water-drinking architect's useless napkin sketch drove a DIYer to build his own browser-based timber frame design software from scratch.
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Timber-frame knowledge for real projects
Practical guidance for planning, designing and building timber frames, organized to help you find the next useful answer.
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Latest practical guides
Aug 19, 20263 min
Saskatoon’s New Library Pairs Mass Timber With a High-Performance Envelope
A new central library on the Canadian prairies shows why exposed wood, airtightness, daylight and efficient all-electric systems must be designed together.
Aug 19, 20264 min
Where Timber Buildings Leak Air: 18 Homes Put to the Blower-Door Test
Field tests in a cold climate locate the weak points that turn a well-insulated timber envelope into an energy-performance gap.
Aug 18, 20263 min
A Passive Timber Wall in Practice: U-Values, Airtightness and the Junction Problem
A 2026 self-build case documents one panel system’s thermal targets—and the details that decide whether factory performance reaches site.
Aug 18, 20263 min
Beech Fibre Inside Bricks: A New Bio-Based Insulation Route
Researchers are testing mats and loose granules made from beech fibre as two ways to insulate perforated masonry.
Aug 18, 20264 min
Can You Cut That I-Joist? A Beginner’s Guide to Service Openings
July 2026 tests show why the shape, size and location of service openings change the capacity and failure mode of wood I-joists.
Aug 18, 20263 min
Massachusetts Offers $40,000 Per Team for Mass Timber: A Beginner’s Guide
A public accelerator offers selected project teams up to $40,000 in technical support. Here is what early-stage mass-timber assistance can—and cannot—do.
Aug 18, 20263 min
Uruguay Turns a Timber-Housing Competition Into 20 Social Homes
A public programme is moving from award-winning ideas to a small built test, giving Uruguay a chance to measure cost, speed and durability before scaling timber housing.
Aug 11, 20263 min
Are Light Timber Homes Too Flimsy for Earthquakes? A Full-Scale Test Answers
Full-scale cyclic tests published in June 2026 show how a light wood-frame building resists and deforms under simulated earthquake loading.
Construction
Jul 30, 20267 min
Timber Volume, Weight & Cost Calculator (Metric + Imperial)
Convert timber dimensions or known volume into m³, ft³, board feet, estimated weight and material cost—with metric and imperial examples.
Jul 30, 20266 min
Mass Timber Types Explained: Species, Grades and Bonding
CLT, glulam, DLT and NLT are not interchangeable. Learn how product type, species, grade, bonding and moisture affect a useful quantity estimate.
Jul 30, 20266 min
C16 vs C24 Timber: When Homegrown UK Wood Fits the Job
UK-grown softwood is commonly graded C16, while imported C24 remains familiar. The useful question is what the verified design actually requires.
Aug 11, 20265 min
CLT, Glulam or Hybrid? A Beginner’s Guide Through Five European Housing Projects
Five European housing projects show why mass timber is a kit of structural choices rather than one universal building system.
Innovation
Dec 10, 20257 min
Wood vs Steel Embodied Carbon: How to Compare A1–A3 Fairly
A timber structure can have lower product-stage emissions than a steel alternative, but there is no universal percentage. A useful comparison starts with equivalent function, matched quantities, one life-cycle boundary and transparent carbon factors.
Aug 11, 20263 min
Can Phase-Change Timber Cut Energy Demand? New CLT Tests Say Up to 11.8%
Researchers embedded a phase-change material inside timber and modelled how the modified CLT could steady temperatures and reduce annual demand.
Aug 11, 20263 min
Kaj 16 Reaches Full Height: What Sweden’s 78-Metre Timber Hybrid Teaches the Jobsite
A waterfront office tower in Gothenburg has topped out, shifting attention from renderings to moisture, tolerances, sequencing and hybrid interfaces.
Aug 11, 20263 min
One Thousand Timber Modules in 24 Months: Inside Rostock’s New Federal Campus
A German public campus uses roughly one thousand prefabricated timber room modules to compress a huge programme into a two-year assembly challenge.
Sustainability
Aug 8, 20265 min
BCIT’s 12-Storey Timber Residence Turns Student Housing Into a Zero-Carbon Test Case
Burnaby’s tallest mass-timber building adds 469 beds while combining prefabricated CLT floors, a fully electric design and zero-carbon certification.
Aug 8, 20266 min
Canada Backs Prairie Mass Timber With a $4.4 Million Forest-Sector Package
Ten federal investments connect automated timber manufacturing, Indigenous forestry, market development and research intended to support future building-code updates.
Aug 8, 20264 min
Cheadle Eco Park Raises an All-Timber Industrial Frame at National Scale
A six-unit industrial development near Manchester is replacing the familiar steel portal frame with timber—and making its carbon boundaries worth examining.