You don’t have to be a fairytale character to live in a wooden house anymore. Ukraine's real estate market now boasts a number of construction companies specialized in building wooden houses, which experts say are becoming serious competitors to ones made of brick or concrete.
The trend
is also picking up internationally, with experts predicting wooden
constructions could soon make a major entrance in big cities.
“The latest
technologies allow building wooden skyscrapers up to 30 floors, which will be
much safer than existing buildings,” says Canadian architect Michael Green from
Michael Green Architecture.
Ukraine
currently has more than two dozen construction companies working with wood
registered, with new ones popping up each year. Prices typically range $600 to
$1,000 (Hr 5,000-8,200) per square meter.
“It is hard
to say what the cost of a wooden house is, just as with cars,” says Oleksandr
Levytskyi, chief architect of Attika style construction company. “You can have
a cheap or expensive car, with leather salon or not. The same goes for houses.”
Some offer
an interactive solution to this problem. The website of construction firm
Avantage offers a solution in which clients pick the living space and terrace
area, roofing, ladders, floors and ceiling materials and even the type of
heating and electricity systems. Typical choices entail a cost of around Hr
1,500,000 for a house of 180 square meters, comparable to a brick building.
The choice
of timber, the primary input, is major determining factor, says Oleksandr
Zagrebin, director and cofounder of Avantage, which has completed hundreds of
projects since opening in 2000. It works only with glued timber, which Zagrebin
claims is the best possible wooden construction material.
Timber
comes in two types: glued timber, which sticks dried wooden planks together,
and cylindrical timber, which is essentially a tree trunk without the bark.
“Glued
timber doesn’t dry after construction. It can only react to weather conditions
in a natural way, like dry or swell but only up to 0.05 percent,” Zagrebin
notes. He says cylindrical timber, which is not technically mature wood, can
dry up to 8 percent – up to half a meter for a two story building. Its cheaper,
though, he adds, so you can still use it as long as clients are informed about
the consequences.
Yet fire
remains the biggest worry for wooden building owners, though experts say this
is no longer the problem it once was.
“In case of
fire, large beams, treated with a special compound, only get charred,
protecting the structure underneath,” Green from Michael Green Architecture
says. He adds glued timber is currently the most ecologically friendly option,
another reason why it so widely used.
Meanwhile,
the idea of living in a comfy wooden house is growing on Ukrainian consumers.
Stanislav Dyachenko bought his house in the outskirts of Kyiv from a Ukrainian
producer in 2006 and is still happy with it.
“First of
all the atmosphere in a wooden house is much warmer and the house itself is
much warmer (too). The heating for it is much cheaper than for any other
house,” Dyachenko said. “So far I didn’t have any big problems or even any
problems.”
He first
experienced life in a wooden house while living in one in Moscow, where he
understood that “living in a wooden house feels so much more like home.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].
