Did you know there is a country that has adopted Passive House performance levels in timber framed buildings, sorted the MVHR issues and has quite innovative framing practices we should examine? Check out Swedish platform framing: there is lots for us all to learn.
Image: lamidesign.com
US architect Gregory La Vardera has this to say (emphasis mine):
“Balloon Framing revolutionized house building in America with the introduction of the first stud framed system. Western Platform Framing refined the method making the required studs smaller, easier to transport to site, easier to mill. It has served us well, but house building is under new pressures to deliver greater energy performance, and the once brilliant Western Platform Frame is simply no longer up to the job. Times have changed. The Swedish Platform Frame method is the next sensible evolution of these stud framing techniques and is destined to replace them as the way we build houses in the US.
“I make this bold sounding claim simply because it is not so bold. What sounds like a prediction has already come to pass. The Swedish Platform Frame has already replaced the Western Platform Frame, not here in the US but in Sweden of course. So this claim is no stretch at all. As a solution the Swedish Platform Frame has already been vetted by 40 years of home construction. It has already [been] tested, gone through its experimental phase and refined. All the tough work has already been done. Here in the US we have a much simpler task of adapting the method to work with our current building materials, and over time adapting the materials to work better with system [sic], taking even greater efficiency from it.”
Excerpted from his very extensive post here: Swedish Platform Framing Info
More info
Energy Smart Housing Innovation The Swedish Way Hardcover – 1 Nov. 2010