W6 Feature House

FastFrame @ The W6 Exhibition

W6 is the UK's biggest woodworking event, showcasing the latest innovations in joinery, timber construction and furniture manufacture.

 

The National Working with Wood (W6) exhibition meets the needs of the wood processing industries in the UK; embracing construction, joinery and furniture production. As a visitor, you can spend days seeing the entire wood processing industry brought together under one roof at the NEC.

 

As you look around the W6, a number of additional features will catch your eye. At the heart of the exhibition sits the FastFrame Timber Frame 2-Day house, an informative focus on the booming timber frame construction market. Information abounds in the learning Zone with its emphasis on training and development, welcoming leading colleges for the first time.

 

Exhibitions are important opportunities to see what is new and innovative within an industry. W6 is no exception, highlighting innovation throughout. In fact celebrity designer Linda Barker is to carry out the final judging and present the Innovation Award to the winner at the timber frame house feature.

 

StartLife

The StartLife timber frame feature stands tall at the W6 Exhibition, showcasing the latest innovations in timber framed construction and furniture/component innovations through its parly-exposed structure.

 

 

Welcome to StartLife: showcasing some latest timber materials to show how specifying timber enables truly affordable starter homes to be created.

As you walk around StartLife - designed specifically for the W6 show by Benfield ATT, one of the UK’s leading timber frame building partners - you will both appreciate how flexible timber is as a construction material, and the speed and cost-effectiveness of off-site timber solutions.

 

>> Tip: Click to enlarge images With a price tag of under £50,000 (built), each home sits well-under the Governments ‘Affordable Homes’ £60k target, making this the ultimate expandable detached starter home (with first floor left as a shell for later completion, the home can be extended by simple additions to side or end). Design work only started a month ago, and the innovative StartLife wall panels started being manufactured in Benfield ATT’s off-site facility in South Wales just two weeks go.The wall panels incorporate SmartPly OSB and a variety of insulation materials to demonstrate the flexibility of timber frame. Erection of StartLife started just three days ago…now look at it! Benfield ATT’s proprietary ‘Quick-Build’ system allows the engineered glulam beams (donated by Laminated Wood Ltd) to simply lock together using hidden self-tightening StartLife connectors. As well as allowing the full beauty of the exposed timber structure to shine through with clean, unbolted joints, this also allows the building to be dismantled quickly; this StartLife for example, will be dismantled in just one day! More information is available on the Benfield ATT StartLife mini-site at www.benfieldatt.co.uk/startlife or by calling 01291 437050.