House Framing

House Framing - Most homes built over the last century are constructed from timber or masonry in this article I will explain the main components of a house frame.

Homes built from timber consist of wooden beams, roof rafters, floor joists, wall studs and partitions.

They are sized according to researched specifications and size tables, these sizes are based on the basic load engineering principles.

It’s essential to recognize which elements are important to a buildings structure in order that you don’t weaken its strength when altering or undertaking work that includes chopping into framing members.

For example if part of a wall is removed or all of a load-bearing this may cause the building to become weakened and areas may lose their structural integrity.

Non-bearing walls are either perpendicular or parallel to joists or rafters. They create the room layouts and are often made from light form-work. They don’t require foundations which mean they can be removed without jeopardizing the structure’s strength.

The rest of the house framing must be supported by a foundation or footing. This provides a surface which supports the structure and gives the building it’s rigidity.

Foundation and footings deliver loads from the house down to solid soil. The footing is broader than the foundation to increase it’s loading capacity.

The mass of roofing materials and loads exert forces on the roof rafters, this entail pulls ceiling joists from each end. The triangular form is structurally strong and capable of withstanding the forces exerted on it by wind and rainfall.

Evolution of House Framing

If you look at the landscape of North America, then you can see the variety of homes across the country.

These homes, made of brick, stacked logs, concrete blocks and even stone are found in all regions.

While in some cases this material has the potential to act as the strcutre and the exterior finish, this isn’t always the case.

One example of this would be with a wooden framed house, which use sheathing, of the wood panels to ensure a resilent structure, which has evolved over time.

When homes were first built by colonists, they were made with timber frames, as this was the available material of the time period.

While this went out of style for a while, it is now enjoying a revival.

In order to make a timber frame home, large beams are used and are supported by large posts, that create the structure of the home.

There is domples joinery involved, and all of this is secure with wooden pegs. The use of the timber frame by the colonists were the obvious choice when looking for strength and available materials of the time.

Large plot of land rapidly became farmland in these settlements, making the ability to find large timber a difficult task.

This forced builders to create a framing system that could handle the challenge of stability, while still using smaller timber pieces.

Once these frames were designed, they wetre then attached using nails, versus wooden pegs, and this allowed more basic carpenters to do crucial work to complete construction on these newer homes.

So the construction process moved from using only heavy and wide timber pieces, to small and light wood pieces, that were closer together and gave support this way.

The first version of this construction method was actually called balloon framing, and featured lumber that extended from the roof to the foundation.

This evolved into a stronger method called platform framing that used smaller lengths of wood. This is the system that is used for home frame building today.

It uses wood-framed walls, that include a floor system or a platform in the design.

This platform acts like a base for all sets of walls. This process is less expensive, easier to make, and has easier access to materials than ballon framing.

Framing this way is done very quickly, and is solid, stiff and sturdy. In this reading, all framing mentioned is platform framing.

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