5 Pros of Off-Site Construction for Self Builders

When it comes to getting your new home built, you have two main options. The traditional route sees all materials delivered to your site. Weather permitting, these are put together by your construction team. The alternative is taking the off-site production route.

As its name implies, off-site production means that many of your new home’s building elements – wall and roof encapsulation panels, such as WrightWall and WrightRoof and dormer windows – are made away from your plot, in a workshop.

Those prefabricated elements are then delivered on the back of lorries and slotted together on site. This results in fewer disruptions and speeds up the time it takes to get to a dry shell. Here are Oakwrights’ five reasons why this could be a great option for major components of your self build.

1. Complete Control

Going off-site with your build means as many major components as possible are put together in a quality-controlled workshop. Working in our climate-controlled workshops allows our carpenters to operate with greater precision compared to working on-site in constantly fluctuating outdoor conditions.

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With the WrightWall installed, the WrightRoof and dormer windows are the final elements to be craned into place

2. Top Technology

At Oakwrights, we use Dietrich’s 3D software to design our oak frames. This technology allows our designers (and you) to see inside the virtual timbers and to explore your oak frame home virtually before production commences.

Oak posts and beams are manufactured with our Hundegger cutting machinery. The millimetre-perfect frame elements are then slotted together by our experienced carpentry team. After final quality checks, the frames are loaded onto lorries and delivered to your site for a speedy installation.

3. Perfect Panels

In the neighbouring warm, dry workshop to where your oak frame is created, we also manufacture wall and roof panels. Being made in controlled conditions means this essential insulation element fits precisely around your frame.

As one of our carpenters put it: “Prefabrication allows us to be more precise when making our panels. The benefit of this is a smoother construction process onsite. That’s satisfying for me as a carpenter. But, more importantly, it’s very satisfying for our clients to see.”

Green oak in the Oakwrights workshop being tailored to fit together perfectly

4. Speedy Build Times

With the groundworks complete, it’s possible to erect your oak frame on site in just a matter of days, depending on its size and complexity. Your encapsulation panels follow your oak frame and wrap seamlessly around your oak frame getting you to a dry shell much quicker than traditional methods of construction.

5. Avoiding Weather Delays

The UK tends to be cold, damp, windy or stormy more days than it’s not. So, being on site for fewer days means that your build team is less likely to suffer from weather disruptions.

This makes the whole project much more likely to stick to the planned schedule. So, you could say that off-site production means a much sunnier outlook for you, the self builder.