The Year and Awards
2019 has been a big year for Oakwrights as we turned 20 years old in February. Where has the time gone?
The year started with political uncertainty however, it never fails to amaze me just how tenacious the self-build community is. We feel so privileged that our clients have chosen Oakwrights to build their beautifully designed oak framed homes.
While we have always believed that we design and build the best oak frame homes, it was great to be recognised this year by National Architectural Awards. We are proud to have won:
2019 has been a busy year for many reasons some of which are highlighted below:
Newly developed house ranges
We have introduced two new ranges to our portfolio, complementing our exiting Woodhouse range that is designed around our showhome. These two new ranges include, a range of Barn style homes and cottage style homes.
To add to this excitement, two of our very own employees, Charlie Mills and Craig Holden have both taken the plunge, building two cottage style homes from our new range.
It has been great to see the younger generation taking on the challenge of building their first homes; working every evening and weekend to bring their dreams to fruition. These houses are clean, and full of character of an oak frame while remaining cost-effective to build. Follow their journey’s on Instagram at @selfbuildlife and @cottage.church.
Passivhaus Certification
We are proud to announce that we have gained certification on our second Oak frame Passivhaus here in Herefordshire. This follows on from our 2016 success of becoming the first company to build a fully certified oak framed Passivhaus in the UK.
Passivhaus is a rigorous energy efficient standard that reduces a building’s ecological footprint. Our Wrightwall Natural encapsulation system enables us to build to these high standards. This standard requires an airtightness test of 0.6, which we are excited to say we smashed with a test of 0.5 at this Herefordshire home. We look forward to sharing more about this project in the new year.
New Offices
We are pleased to announce that our new workshop at Sugwas farm is now fully operational with our oak frame design team and project management teams taking residence in the purpose-built office space. This has provided an open and airy working environment with beautiful views across Herefordshire. Why not arrange a visit to see it for yourself, we’d love to show you how all our oak frames are lovingly crafted?
New Equipment
As you all know, technology never stands still. To enable us to continue to provide you with the best crafted oak frame buildings we have invested in a new Stromab saw to assist with the production of our encapsulation systems. This saw enables us to cut components quickly in preparation to pass through our multi-function bridge that creates our wall and roofing panels.
An expanding team
As well as investing in new technology it is so important for us to invest in our people. We are looking forward to starting 2020 with a fresh intake of trainees to our Oakwrights Academy while we have had the pleasure of welcoming other staff across the administrative and design side of the company.
Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and New Year,
Tim Crump
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