Private House, Woolley, Bude

Buckland was approached to design, manufacture and install a spruce glulam frame to create a new detached three-bedroom house on private land in Bude.

The ‘Forever Home’ has been designed to retain warmth and character, with a double-height living room to offer a light and airy focal point and as many features as possible to make it individual.

It was important for the client to make as many sustainable choices as possible, one of the reasons they opted for a glulam frame. The house also houses solar panels on the roof, enabling them to be ‘off grid’ in the electric department, and they chose hemp blocks for their insulation material.

Thermalite trench blocks and a concrete foundation were laid with engineering bricks built up on the outside of them. The glulam columns were then installed, and the frame completed providing the structural element, and the hempblocks were then wrapped around it ‘like a big woolly jumper’!

This project was one of several that we have worked on in partnership with The Hemp Block Company. For the size of blocks needed for the build, these were made in Italy so they made quite the trip –  to help reduce the carbon impact of the transportation from Italy The Hemp Block Company use inter modal transportation, travelling up through Europe by train, then by boat to the UK, and finally by road to Cornwall! The Hemp Block Company are keen to start manufacturing in the UK in the future to aid even more sustainable building.

For more insights into this project, please do visit the owner’s Instagram page @our_cornish_wild_bank_build