FACIT Homes Use PEFC Certified Timber

21 February 2012 Construction

Proud house owners Nick and Veronika Garwolinski chose the Facit Homes system to create a home with PEFC certified timber at its very heart. 

In 2007, Nick and Veronika Garwolinski purchased a plot of land at auction. Keen to build the house of their dreams and one with solid environmental credentials, they turned to Facit Homes. Building company Facit Homes specializes in the creation of prefabricated wooden housing using sustainable PEFC certified timber.

The company uses a software system to generate detailed 3D computer models for house plans. These are then transmitted to its workshops where a digital machine cuts timber panels, which are then assembled into cassettes that slot together to create the chassis of the house. These are supplied with holes into which insulation can be pumped, as well as casements. "By combining PEFC and FSC materials with our patented D-Process," says Facit Homes' Andrew Goodeve, "we provide our clients with a home that is high performance, but also has the lowest embodied energy possible. This means that a single Facit Home saves 47 tons of C0₂ compared to a typical masonry built home. This is the equivalent of heating the house for 103 years, or driving 19 times around the world in a Toyota Prius."

"The system is really simple to use," says Veronika Garwolinski. "The timber cassettes are delivered to the construction site in batches, so storing them isn't an issue. All the pieces are numbered and they slot together easily, so if you can figure out which number goes where, you can work out what to do. Everything from the floor cassettes to the walls and roof cassettes went up extremely quickly.

"I visited the site every few days and was struck by how much had changed each time. The house structure went up pretty quickly – it was a very smooth process. It took about three weeks from the screw pile foundations going in, to the roof cassettes and insulation being installed. Once the slate roofing was completed, the last thing we needed to work on externally was the cladding.

"It has been a very quick building process, and the Facit system certainly helped with this. Because it is so precise it has the added benefit that we knew exactly how much building materials were going to cost all along, there was no chance of a miscalculation.

"It also meant the builders could give us a really accurate estimate of their time and labour costs. It is a very reliable construction method that I would recommend to others, and our builders certainly had no problems with it. It is so simple that I think I could have carried the panels onsite and put them together myself! We knew what pieces we needed: we knew what should go where. In fact, putting up the house was the easiest part of the build."

Further Information

• Facit Homes
• The above is reprinted here in its entirety with kind thanks to Build It Magazine
• FACIT Homes Use PEFC Certified Timber (244.96 kB)

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