High quality homes from the factory

A sustainable home in a very short time

In the Eindhoven neighborhood of 't Ven, 88 new homes were built this year for Woonstichting 'thuis. In itself, this is not such great news. What is remarkable is that the wood frame houses were completely prefabricated in Heijmans' factory in Heerenveen. The bio-based homes were assembled on site in just a few days. Systemair contributed to the healthy indoor climate.

These are so-called Horizon homes of different sizes. The houses are constructed from 2D elements for the walls, floors and roof and 3D modules for the bathrooms, installations and staircase. These 3D modules form the cores of the homes and they also contain the air heating systems, which are also used for cooling and ventilation. The homes are made modularly in the factory and stacked on top of each other at the construction site. "From the outside, you can't tell that they come from the factory. They are clad in stone strips, jointed and all. Traditionally they have roof tiles and solar panels on them. That is the only thing that has been done on site," says Marcel Lammers, senior installation consultant at Heijmans. 

Custom

When the modules arrived in Eindhoven, they were already equipped with doors, plumbing, windows, frames, installations and even wall coverings. Above the suspended ceiling on the second floor, the installations are concealed and there is a climate unit in the attic. Lammers: "The boiler is heated with residual heat and there is a heat exchanger unit in it. The air is then further heated by the heat pump. In the summer, cooling is done this way." Variable volume valves allow ventilation at the right time with the right amount of air and at the right temperature.

All accommodation areas received a supply grille for this, which was supplied by Systemair. Edwin Bartels, product manager at Systemair: "This is the Nova A type in a white finish. There is a return grille in the kitchen and air valves in the bathroom, toilet and attic. Behind the grilles are plenum boxes, which we custom-made especially for this project. They are steel boxes to which the air hose is connected. With a wall grille, the air is blown in or out. The plenum boxes are insulated inside against condensation and noise. An OV-R overflow grille was also installed in the attic for additional sound attenuation."

One home per day

Systemair supplied all these parts to Heijmans, then installed them in the 3D modules at the factory. "Even the screws were adjusted beforehand. They no longer have to be adjusted on the construction site, which saves a lot of time," Bartels explains.

The cooperation between the two men has a long history of now 25 years. That makes working together very pleasant, according to both of them. In other municipalities too, homes are rapidly being built in this way, with Systemair supplying and Heijmans installing. Lammers: "In Culemborg, we have built 47 private homes ranging from 46 meters wide to 9 meters deep. In Nuenen, we are currently building 28 homes. This is the new way of building. We expect between 1,000 and 1,200 homes per year to come out of our factory by 2030. In the factory, one home is made per day and on-site construction also takes one day. In the future, we want to build two homes per day. On the other hand, the development time is very long. We have been in full development since 2021 and in the summer of 2023 we only started making the homes."

Configurator

Several types of Horizon homes are available with a choice of floor plans, both for single households and entire families. In this way, homes can be configured to suit everyone's needs. Meanwhile, developments are not standing still, Lammers says. "We are in the process of developing a housing configurator so that companies can put together a home with set concepts. Project-based thinking is a thing of the past. Standardized homes are the future."