Steel frames, beams and posts installed inside timber barns and old farm buildings around Diss and the Waveney valley, on both banks of the river. Made in Norwich to your engineer's drawings and fitted with care for what already stands.
Diss, about 23 miles south of our Norwich workshop on the A140.
Steel erectors, Waveney valley
Nothing in a two hundred year old timber frame is level, plumb or the same size twice. New steel has to cope with that.
Swift Fabrication provides steel erection in Diss for owners, builders and farmers giving old buildings a new use. A barn conversion asks a lot of steel: a frame to carry a first floor, posts and beams where headroom is wanted under a tie beam, a goalpost round the cart door that is about to become a wall of glass.
Your structural engineer decides what steel goes where and how it meets the oak. Our part is to measure the building as it really is, make each piece to suit, and get it inside without harming the frame you are paying to keep. That tends to mean smaller pieces, bolted splices, more hand gear than heavy plant, and some patience.
Structural steel in Diss
Inside a timber frame
No two conversions are alike. We walk the building with your builder first, then settle the method, the lifting gear and the price before any steel is cut.
Bay widths wander and posts lean, so each position is measured on its own and awkward shapes are templated. We look at the way in as well: door heights, the state of the floor, and whether the roof will be on or off when steel arrives.
Long beams are made in lengths that pass through the door and between the trusses, then joined with bolted splices. Lifting is by compact hired plant where the floor allows, or by chain blocks and material lifts. We do not hang loads off old timbers unless the engineer agrees.
Baseplates sit on new pads cast by your builder. Where steel meets timber, the brackets, bolts and packers go in as the engineer has drawn them. Everything is levelled and tightened, and primer scuffed on the way in is touched up.
Working farms in the valley
Farms around Diss, Eye and Harleston still want working steel: a lean-to against a grain store, another bay on a machinery shed, a mezzanine in the farm workshop. We erect those as well, on bases cast by your groundworker.
The Waveney is the county line, and we work either side of it with no difference in how a job is priced or run. A yard at Scole, a unit on Vinces Road or Sawmills Road, a farm out towards Botesdale in Mid Suffolk: the steel is made in Norwich and comes down the A140 on a lorry.
Many barns here are listed or sit in a conservation area. Consents are for you and your architect to obtain. RAMS are provided for our site work.
Beams into cottages and shops
Builders in Diss ask us for steel beam installation in timber framed cottages, Victorian terraces and the old shops near the Mere, where ceilings are low and no wall is straight. Beams are made in sections two people can carry, with splices placed where the engineer allows.
Propping, padstones and making good normally sit with your builder. We agree who does what beforehand, arrive when the opening is ready, and leave the beam bearing properly at both ends.
Machinery installation in DissSouth Norfolk, north Suffolk
Diss is about 23 miles from the workshop, near enough for a visit to measure, another to check your builder's pads, and then the fitting days themselves. Roydon, Scole, Harleston, Eye and Botesdale all belong to the same patch, with the villages between them on either bank.
For an estimate, send the engineer's drawings, photographs of the inside of the building and of the way in from the road, and a note of what stage the build has reached. Tell us if the roof is coming off, because that changes how steel can be lifted. Estimates are free, and the price is agreed before work starts.
Steel fabrication in DissQuestions from Diss
It can, if your consents allow it. Listed building consent and planning are for you and your architect, and the design is your engineer's. With those in place we make and fit the steel as drawn, and take care over every fixing into historic timber.
Yes. Eye, Botesdale and the Mid Suffolk villages are as close to us as the Norfolk ones. The county boundary changes nothing in the estimate, which allows for travel from Norwich whichever bank you are on.
Usually. Inside a barn a crane is rarely much use anyway. We plan on compact hired plant, material lifts, chain blocks and temporary steel, and size the pieces to be handled that way. If something cannot be got in safely, you will hear it from us at drawing stage.
Yes. We fabricate and erect portal frames, lean-tos and shed extensions for farms around Diss. Your groundworker casts the bases to the engineer's drawing and we stand the frame on them.
Steel erection, Diss
Send the engineer's drawings and some photographs of the inside. We will visit, measure the frame as it stands and come back with a free estimate.