stewart engineers limited

We wish to dispel a myth about the 3 Little Pigs story: This is essentially a story about building a single storey domestic dwelling that has wall panels with appropriate diaphragm support from floor and ceiling structures and is subject to wolf exhalation; not really a large dynamic pressure in itself, but let’s examine the physics:

A single skin 100 mm blockwork wall panel, say 4.0 m wide x 2.4 m high, supported on all 4 sides has an unfactored lateral wind load capacity of around 0.50 kN/m2; whereas a timber stud wall constructed of the same thickness, say 100 x 50 C16 timber sections at 600 mm centres, has an unfactored lateral wind load capacity of at least 0.95 kN/m2 > 0.50 kN/m2, making it a stronger solution (this also allows for a conservative deflection limit).

Therefore, the last pig had it wrong; he only thought of the compressive capacity of his chosen material, which is superfluous in this scenario. The second pig, in our opinion, had it right; from a structural perspective. Also, if you consider the first option, contemporary straw built walls incorporate timber frame for strength and straw for insulation, so the first and second pig may have had the best, combined, solution for lateral load capacity and thermal properties.

The third pig was smug and ill-informed and probably has the type of personality that is deemed fit to be chosen to present some tv programme talking nonsense on how to build things (and flap about when things go wrong, when they actually don’t).