Modular or site-built?

Sommarnöjen was founded to make it easier for people to obtain beautiful holiday cottages and attefallshus. In the first years we built all our houses on site at the customer's location, plank by plank in loose timber. All houses were individually designed by selected architects, built in the finest materials and were priced accordingly.

During 2014 we began investing in the development of our own house collections and manufacturing methods. By establishing production of finished houses in our own factory we were able to build modular houses of the same quality as our site-built houses, but at a lower cost. The reason is that planning, procurement, transportation and coordination of the different craftsmen required to build a house become much more efficient.

Today we deliver modular houses every week, all year round. But we hold on to our tradition and erect a number of site-built houses every year, each one unique.

Building houses as finished volumetric modules offers fantastic advantages. It gives great freedom in architecture and design. It gives full control over the building process with quality controls before the house leaves the factory. The on-site construction time becomes minimal, as does the impact on nature and the environmental impact of the transports. Finally, your total cost becomes at least 30 % lower than for an identical house built traditionally.

So why don't we build all our houses as finished modules? The answer is that there are places where it is not possible to deliver them, and there are customers with special requests.

Site-built houses are crafted in a traditional way. It takes longer and costs more. At the same time the building method gives you full freedom to get a beautiful house even in the most inaccessible location. Since the material arrives as loose timber we can use smaller boats, helicopters, ATVs and strong arms to get it into place. And because it is purchased separately for each project you can choose the materials, interior and equipment – yes, everything in the house – exactly to your taste.

All our house models can be built in loose timber but the majority of our site-built projects are designed specifically for the individual site and customer, and therefore erected as a single unit. We often assist our customers in choosing the architectural firm or individual architect that is best suited to design their specific project – and collaborate with the chosen architect to create a unique solution. Sometimes we instead collaborate with the customer's own architect.

Our site-built projects are always carried out on a turnkey contract where we handle transportation, groundworks and turnkey construction. Unlike modular houses there are no fixed models or price lists – each project is planned and priced according to the conditions. For a site-built project you should budget at least 38.000 kr per square meter of floor area for a turnkey house.