New build homes
“Home” is such a generic term and can mean so many things and take many different forms, although one thing we do know is….it’s yours, so make it your own!
The U-Roof system provides you with design flexibility and freedom to do just that!
Our expertise and system innovation has not only made it able for us to achieve SCI / NHBC stage 1 system certification for walls and floors, but we also and uniquely in the industry hold SCI / NHBC stage 1 system certification for our roof system too. This means your U-Roof frame will be accepted and covered by the NHBC warranty scheme for strength, durability and stability as standard.
Download our certification documents on our resources page
Or see our previous projects for multi-occupancy residential
Easy to assemble steel framed buildings
Why Choose U-Roof for Your New Home Construction?
- Full frames
- Roofs
- Warm roof/frame construction
- Steel framed buildings
- Single storey extensions
- Loft conversion systems
- Garden rooms
- Portable buildings
- Prefabricated buildings
Steel frame new build homes
U-Roof manufactures galvanised light gauge steel frames for new build housing — single self-build plots, small developer sites and larger housebuilder schemes. The frame is engineered to your architect’s drawings, roll-formed in our Brighouse factory, and delivered as pre-fabricated numbered panels with a complete construction drawing set.
Light gauge steel is now a mainstream residential superstructure in the UK, and the reasons are practical rather than fashionable.
What it changes on a housing site
- Programme certainty. Panels arrive labelled with a fixing schedule. Erection does not depend on finding skilled carpenters or on the weather drying out timber.
- No shrinkage or settlement. Timber platform frames shrink vertically as they dry out, which is a well-known source of cracked plaster and sticking doors in the first two years. Steel does not move.
- Identical units. Plot 1 and plot 40 are dimensionally the same, so windows, doors, staircases and kitchens can be procured in bulk with confidence.
- Lighter foundations. A lighter superstructure than masonry means smaller foundations, which is worth real money on poor or made ground.
- Non-combustible structure. A straightforward route to satisfying fire requirements rather than engineering around a combustible frame.
- Less waste. Precision manufacture means very little goes in the skip.
Meeting current Building Regulations
Part L is the constraint that shapes the wall build-up. Because steel conducts heat far more readily than timber, a steel frame home must be built with a continuous layer of insulation outboard of the frame — a warm frame or hybrid build-up — rather than insulation only between the studs.
Done correctly this comfortably achieves current U-value targets and, importantly, achieves them in reality rather than only on the calculation. Because the frame is dimensionally accurate and factory-made, the airtightness line is easier to establish and easier to keep continuous, which helps significantly with the air permeability test.
We provide the recommended build-up alongside the structural design. It is the one element of the specification that should not be value-engineered.
Design freedom
A light gauge steel frame carries more load over a longer span in a shallower section than the timber equivalent. On a house that translates into:
- Open-plan ground floors without a line of posts or a heavy transfer beam
- Large glazed openings and full-width bi-folds without a masonry pier in the middle
- Vaulted and room-in-roof spaces with usable head height
- Cantilevers and first floor overhangs designed as part of the frame rather than bolted on
See our roof systems page for how the roof structure is engineered around span, pitch and covering.
What we supply for a new build
- Galvanised light gauge steel load-bearing wall panels, pre-fabricated and numbered by plot and elevation
- Floor cassettes engineered for span and imposed load
- Roof trusses or rafters engineered for span, pitch and your chosen covering
- All structural fixings
- Full construction drawing set, foundation setting-out and fixings schedule — see construction drawings
Cladding, roofing, glazing, insulation, M&E and internal finishes are procured by you or your contractor, so the house is specified to your market rather than to our catalogue.
Self-build
For a self-builder, the superstructure is the stage where a mistake is hardest and most expensive to recover from. A manufactured frame removes most of that risk: the panels are cut, punched and labelled before they arrive, and the drawings show every fixing position.
A competent two-person team with the drawings can erect the shell without specialist trades, and we are available by phone throughout. Because the frame arrives complete, the building can be made weathertight quickly — which protects everything that follows.
Developers and housebuilders
For repeat plots we phase manufacture and delivery against your build programme rather than delivering the whole scheme at once, and we band and label panels by plot so they can be distributed in erection sequence with minimal double handling.
We are happy to engage at Stage 3 and advise on structural depths, achievable spans and floor-to-floor heights before the design is fixed. See our partners page and multi-occupancy residential.
Sustainability
Steel is recycled indefinitely without loss of properties, and UK structural steel already contains a high recycled content. At the end of the building’s life the frame is a recoverable material, not landfill. Precision manufacture also means dramatically less site waste than a cut-on-site structure. See sustainability.
Start a new build project
Send us your drawings — even at sketch stage — and we will come back with a specification, the structural approach and a price for the frame package.
Talk to U-Roof or see completed projects in our case studies and gallery.