Huf Haus kit home in Beaconsfield

9:10am Saturday 29th September 2007

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THE first speculative Huf Haus to be built in Bucks will be open to view for the first time this weekend.

Kit houses built by this German manufacturer won't need any introduction to fans of the Channel 4 programme Grand Designs. The programme which has made presenter Kevin McCloud a household name follows the ups and downs endured by brave souls who opt to go down the self-build route.

“I’d wanted to build a contemporary house with lots of glazing and wood "

Andrew McMullen owner

The Huf Haus shown in the first series stood out from almost all the other DIY projects featured before or since because it was delivered on time and to budget.

The structure and most of the internal walls went up in five days flat, leaving the owners, a couple in their seventies, full of praise for the quality of the construction and German efficiency. The only hitch that held up progress was when the crane arrived late because the driver went to a town of the same name but somewhere else.

The week before the Channel 4 programme on the project was shown, Andrew McMullen and his wife Tatiana signed a contract with architect and manufacturer Peter Huf to build not one, but two, houses on a garden plot in Sandelswood End, Beaconsfield.

The couple - Andrew's father and brother are both architects; Andrew runs a firm which makes generators for wind farms and Tatiana works in banking - had been looking for a plot to build their own house in Greenwich or Blackheath. Having drawn a blank because of London prices they extended their search to Bucks and snapped up a large plot with a bungalow on it which became their home for the two-and-a-half years it took them to get planning permission to knock it down and replace it with two Hufs.

"I'd wanted to build a contemporary house with lots of glazing and wood and Tatiana liked the Huf houses we'd seen in Dulwich, so we went for that," Andrew says.

They decided to build two almost identical houses side by side to defray the cost. The McMullens and their two year old toddler have already moved into theirs and they hope to find a buyer this weekend who will move into the other.

Despite the quick build, it's been a long haul. Altogether they have employed 20 other contractors, the majority being recommended by the German firm.

The first job was to dig the holes for the basements. "One hundred and eighty lorry loads were carted away," Andrew recalls. "Work on the above ground build started the week of the May Bank Holiday. The kit came with all the windows and locks and blinds and everything in place. The exterior and interior walls were all ready assembled right up to the completed roof.

"The wiring wasn't installed but the ducts were fitted during assembly in the factory. The wiring was done by long hand. The amount of insulation is amazing. There's a foot or more below the floors. First there's a waterproof membrane, then the insulation, then pipes for the underfloor heating. It's laid in layers like an elaborate gateau."

It took the German team six working days to build the shell of the two houses and make them watertight.

Each has five bedrooms and four futuristic bathrooms including one with a state of the art infra-red sauna and another with an air bath the size of a hot-tub.

There's also a Baulthaup kitchen, cinema room with wiring for a plasma screen, a gym and an L-shaped living area with fully glazed walls, some of which glide back in a feat of supreme engineering at the touch of a finger.

Concealed automatic shutters hidden in the black upper frame of the windows drop down and can be tilted like venetian blinds to keep out the sun and make it cosy at night.

Outside, the accentuated overhang of the roofline will keep the owners dry if they want to run round the building when it rains while the rainwater will run down the oversize gutters to be collected in a 3,700 litre tank sunk in a corner of the garden to water the lawns and the plants.

Beaconsfield agent Tim Russ says this weekend will be the first opportunity for potential buyers to look over house. "We deliberately kept them away until it was finished."

An award-winning landscape gardener put the finishing touches to the drive on Thursday.

The guide price is £1.6million.