OSB ON THE JOB: CASE STUDY 1 - RJ JOINERY

With over 33 years of experience working with timber, Roy James certainly knows his panels. Setting up his own joinery business in November 2005, RJ Joinery  now employs three full-time and one part-time member of staff to help meet customer demand for their standard and custom-made timber frame buildings.

"When I started the company, I was a one-man-band based in a small workshop in Talgarth, and I set out to offer a range of timber frame sports and agricultural buildings." says Roy, "Within two years, the business had taken off and we needed larger premises to cope with the volume of work, which is when we moved to Hay-On-Wye, where we are now based."

No project is too big or small

Over the years, Roy and his team have worked on stables, garages, car ports, mobile field shelters and garden sheds and more recently, work has progressed into more modern garden rooms.

RJ Joinery's success largely comes from the adaptability to customer requirements, with the aim to provide purpose-built timber frame buildings for a variety of uses, and part of this flexibility relates to the materials they choose to use.  Roy explains:

"Originally, when we first started, we favoured plywood over Oriented Strand Board (OSB), as we were unsure of how it would perform. However, we saw our competitors start to use OSB panels and we wanted to see why this was becoming more common place. Once we started to work with OSB ourselves, we quickly gained confidence in its stability and longevity and know that in most given situations, it can live up to ply.

"We use OSB for floors, walls and kickboard lining, plus 95% of the roofs we build are lined with OSB. This enables us to create a well-insulated building that keeps the heat out in the summer and the warmth inside for winter. What more could you want?

"Some people may be stuck in their ways and assume that OSB has a lower quality, but when you come to use it you realise it has that strength and durability you need. On occasion, I have had problems when buying in plywood and the consistency of the boards can sometimes be touch and go. In the past two years, the issue of unsustainable plywood imports has been widely highlighted, and so I will now make a point of asking where the timber I use comes from.

"If there is the choice, I will buy FSC certified timber. The quality of the materials I use is also integral to what we do because it is our reputation at stake but price is often the number one concern for the majority of our customers and, through our quotations, OSB is shown to be the most cost-effective option with a comparable life expectancy. For the customer, they are going to get a finished timber framed building that is guaranteed to perform, but will cost half the amount than if we had used plywood in the place of OSB.

Making the change

"At the end of the day, I feel as a business we had to make the change to OSB because otherwise we would have lost out to our competitors. The important thing is to specify the right product for the job at hand, and the lower price-point of OSB means that we can produce high quality timber frame buildings without a high cost to our customers."