Some key facts about the Swedish House Company.
1. Yes, They're actually built in Sweden!
Not every ‘Swedish’ timber-framed house is the genuine article, made in Sweden. You may have looked at its British or Canadian cousins/counterparts and been disappointed with the quality. You may have been deterred by the lack of flexibility many modular constructions impose –which is also true of many European systems.
Sweden is renowned internationally for pioneering off-site timber-frame construction in the 1930’s. Many thousands were exported to Britain after the Second World War. Following the international oil crisis in the1970’s the Swedish government introduced legislation that spurred substantial evolution in the specification of the Swedish House leading us towards the incredible super-eco houses that many offer today.
Of course it helps that Sweden has enormous resources of prime quality timber and was also driven by climatic conditions but when you put these driving forces together with the “Swedish factor” of a Calvinist work ethic and a culture of great team work, you achieve great results driving build quality upwards.
By comparison, Britain introduced prefabricated timber frame “kit” houses simply to provide a cheaper, quicker building method and in most cases this drove build quality downwards.
This is the genuine article. It’s flexible, it’s incredibly durable, it’s quick to erect and above all it meets today’s requirements for very high levels of energy conservation and environmental respect.
2. Our specifications are exacting
and the quality is outstanding. The flexibility of our system and of the manufacturing process permits soaring glass walls if you want that (and building regs allow!) and an appearance as creative and beautiful as your or your clients’ imagination. We invite you simply to compare their specifications with ours, their quality with ours, their methods of construction with ours, and share your conclusions with your clients.
3. Our houses provide the green solution
Net energy input is vanishingly small (you can easily make it negative, in fact). Ask us about the details. You’ll be hard put to it – at our costs – to commission a house with a higher proportion of renewables, a lower proportion of non-organic material, lower climate-warming gas emissions and a smaller energy footprint.
What’s more, the incredibly low running costs that result from our high specifications make any other house a false economy, without mentioning the freedom from “normal” repair and maintenance costs. In the future, as energy costs climb, and concerns for our environment continue to mount, your clients will continue to enthuse to their friends about the house you designed for them with such foresight.
4. Precision engineered for stability and durability
Our work is precise. You will be on site to see that when the house you designed and ordered is assembled on site every structure starts out true.
You can rest assured that the structure we put up remains true – immune from the effects of any settlement or heave. Our structures are incredibly strong – call it Swedish over-engineering if you like. The land might shift, but our houses can’t distort.
5. We erect fast, on time, on budget, as promised.
The whole assembly process takes a breathtakingly short time. From the arrival of the first lorry by sea from Sweden to the erection by Swedish craftsmen of a fully weather-tight shell is frequently a matter of no more than 48 hours.
The fickle British weather makes building a traditional house a wet, windy, time-consuming process. Brick-built houses are built slowly, in all weathers, by largely unsupervised workmen. They take months to settle and dry out properly, with all the attendant structural cracking, warping, and shrinking.
All our homes are painstakingly constructed indoors, in a climate-controlled environment by highly-trained and motivated Swedish craftsmen.
As is the way in Sweden, they work in teams, ensuring that best practices are strictly adhered to and the highest standards maintained.
6. Client satisfaction
If you’ve not worked with us before, we do understand what a leap of faith you are taking when you invite a client to commission a new house to be system-built for you. You are placing your reputation in other people’s hands; but there are very few people in the world as trustworthy as the Swedes!
And now for the key point. You depend on client satisfaction and recommendation afterwards. When our customers take possession of the completed house, and turn the key in the lock, and step into that uniquely welcoming atmosphere, everything works. We guarantee it. (And in the unlikely event of anything going wrong, we fix it immediately.)
Is it worth risking the hassle and the cost involved in dealing with potential problems that a cheaper system involves? As a proportion of the total cost, the extra your client may initially pay for one of our houses is not very much. And the benefits in reassurance, quality and satisfaction would justify that small extra anyway.
An SHC house is what you should recommend. Our extraordinary high levels of client satisfaction through the subsequent years are your protection, too.
7. Impeccable credentials
Check out any of the hundreds of Swedish houses in the UK that I, Simon Hayes, have been personally responsible for over the last 25 years Wherever you practise, from John O’Groats to Lands End, you won’t be very far from one.
8. More than just individual houses and homes
Although we specialise in individual construction, our system is equally well geared to designing for housing estates with a mix of larger and smaller properties, and to the specifications required.
The intrinsic flexibility of our system makes it equally adaptable to public buildings such as surgeries, schools, office and hotels. |
