The benefits of a timber hall.

Whether you live or work in timber, it is quality of life. Its timeless look and feel are simply incomparable. A timber structure gives a hall a warm, welcoming atmosphere that people enjoy being in. Timber is a natural material with a texture and grain all of its own. And it fits into any architectural style, modern or rustic.

Our clients confirm it: the atmosphere in a timber hall is out of the ordinary. That shows clearly in the wellbeing of the staff, who often spend many hours a day in it.

Timber is made for modern hall construction, because it combines several good properties at once. Its particular cell structure stores heat rather than letting it escape. Timber halls are also chemically stable — and do not build up an electromagnetic charge. On load-bearing capacity, too, timber is out in front: its uniquely light yet resilient fibres match concrete in both tensile and compressive strength. And on fire safety, timber generally holds its own against conventional materials.

If you need to bridge long spans — for a storage hall or a sports hall, say — you can turn to timber with a clear conscience as well. At X-⁠Wood^® our trussed-beam halls reach 40 metres column-free, and up to 50 metres depending on the design. That system is also particularly well suited to mounting overhead cranes and takes heavy roof loads in its stride. Services run through the trusses and take up no extra room.

You could compare the question to asking what a car costs. Between a cheap city car and a fully equipped saloon lies an enormous difference in price. Hall construction is exactly the same.

Countless factors bear on this important point. Where there are particular requirements around fire safety and flexibility, timber can well be the choice that makes the most financial sense. So there is never a blanket answer as to which way of building is cheapest.

Take a very well insulated timber hall 20 metres wide and 25 metres long, with quality sandwich panels, fire safety for the building, external wall requirements and smoke vents, solid plinth elements, gutters and downpipes, transport and assembly included: you can reckon on a price of between €300 and €360 per square metre.

But surely timber goes up like tinder? Not at all — it burns slowly, in a controlled and predictable way. On fire safety it is actually superior to steel: low thermal conductivity and retained load-bearing capacity through charring are decisive advantages. Where timber burns, a layer of char stops oxygen from feeding the fire.

In a fire, timber also releases considerably fewer toxic substances than other building materials. These properties qualify it for fire class B2. So you can rest easy: Germany regulates construction meticulously in every respect — and timber halls are no exception.

It is beyond dispute that timber is one of the most ecological building materials there is. Even once built in, timber takes up CO₂ and releases oxygen. The more timber there is in the world, the more CO₂ is locked away.

So part of the answer to climate change is obvious: plant trees. That is exactly what we do, together with a reforestation organisation — for every cubic metre built in, three new trees are planted, at our expense.