From the very beginning of our journey, we’ve been proud to offer high-quality a-frame kits that anyone can use to build an affordable home.But what does “affordable” really mean?
According to its definition: “an item is affordable with it is priced reasonably and you have enough money to buy it“.
Now, while we cannot guarantee that everyone has enough money to buy an Avrame kit and build a home with it, we can indeed guarantee that the kits are reasonably priced.
You are right, I guess it all comes to what makes a price “reasonable”.
To evaluate if a price is reasonable (or fair) one must understand what does he get for that price.
So here I explain what you get…
What Avrame Stands For
With every kit we sell we make some promises:
- we’ll assist you in making sure you get from us everything you need to set you up for a quick start of the assembly phase;
- we’ll deliver exactly what you ordered and you’ll get it for the price we agreed;
- our kit will contain all the necessary parts and those parts will fit together with no issues;
- when properly assembled and finished, the house will last for a long time and requires minimal maintenance;
- when properly assembled, the house will be extremely energy efficient and be friendly to the Planet (and to your wallet).
Note that the assembly has to be done properly or you’ll end up with a poor final result. It is recommendable you hire at least one skilled and experienced carpenter to assist you during the entire construction process.
High-Quality Materials
The reason we can make this kind of promises is that we trust the materials we use. We trust them to deliver excellent performances and we trust those performances to remain constant over the lifespan of the product.
We trust them because they are high-quality materials and – sorry (but not sorry) – they are not cheap.
Yes, our kits are not intrinsically cheap, simply because the materials we use are top-of-the-line. However, by packaging all these materials together in one well-thought product, we strongly believe we deliver a value that surpasses its price tag, by far.
A-frame Kits: Main Components
To give you a better understanding of what we mean by “high-quality” materials, let’s see all the main components of the kit, in detail.
NOTE: the description that follows is for the kits produced at our headquarters in Estonia (EU kits).
Kits produced in the US adopt different materials and slightly different construction, but the principles of selection of materials are the same.
For more information on the difference between EU and US kits, you can watch this video.
The main components of the kit are:
- the structure of the house
- the windows
- the roofing material
- the windproofing membrane
- the stairs
Here is what you should know about them…
1. THE STRUCTURE
The structure of the kit is made of C24 wood (EU kits).
All the wood material is kiln-dried (lumber moisture levels is brought down to an optimal level) and it has the CE mark.
The A-frame trusses are designed to be flat, so that the installation of insulation material is faster and more precise. This allows maximizing the energy efficiency of the building.
Building flat trusses requires using special screws. These screws are swiss-made and are quite expensive.
Their main characteristic is that they have variable strength so that the part in the wood will always hold while the middle part can bend, in case of extraordinary forces.
This ensures the screw never breaks and makes Avrame super safe, even in extreme weather conditions.
2. THE WINDOWS
In our kits, we use PVC windows.
Modern PVC windows have excellent energy performance, which is totally comparable to that of wooden windows.
Compared to wooden windows, PVC ones are more durable and require less maintenance.
They also cost less, which makes the kit more affordable.
3. THE ROOFING
A-frame houses have a big roof. Consequently, the choice of roofing material is very important.
Our EU kits use metal roof cover by Ruukki.
Ruukki is one of the biggest producers of roofing material in Scandinavia and they offer excellent products with an outstanding guarantee.
They give 25 years of aesthetic guarantee and 50 years of structural guarantee.
…plus the roof really looks fantastic!
4. THE MEMBRANES
Wind-braking membranes (or roofing underlayer) is a very important component in this type of construction because it represents the first line of defense against the weather… and it has a BIG area.
As soon as the structure of the house is up, you want to get it weathertight, so you can start working inside without any risk of weather damage.
As seen above, the roof area is quite big and it takes time to install all the roofing material.
You really want to have the house sealed as fast as possible and with a material that can withstand harsh weather conditions (strong wind, heavy rain, snow).
For this reason, we use one particular membrane: Tyvek Solid 82g/m2 (or equivalent).
This kind of membrane is thicker than standard ones and so we can ensure your insulation material and equipment will be protected even during construction.
5. THE STAIRS
TRIO houses have a full staircase and DUO houses have a staircase which is something between stairs and ladder.
Both are custom built and we manufacture them here in Estonia.
TRIO Staircase
The staircase is 90cm wide. The steps and railings are made out of hardwood. The other parts are in laminated & painted pinewood.DUO Ladder
This ladder has a custom made mechanism that allows for moving easy “folding” of the structure, in order to save space when the stairs are not needed.
The steps are made out of hardwood and the other parts are in laminated & painted pinewood.
Conclusions
In order to be able to guarantee top energy performance and long lifespan of your home, we make our kits using high-quality materials (really, there is no other way… one cannot make a premium product using mediocre materials).
High-quality materials are not cheap… however, our prices are transparent (find out here the price of the kits) and we know for a fact you get a lot of value for what you pay.
One might be tempted to stick-build the entire house on-site (neverending process, if you ask me), however, the real question you should be asking yourself here is:
how smart do you want to build?
Do you want a cheap house that will take ages to be built, give you all sort of troubles and cost you a fortune in running costs?
…or do you want a reasonably priced house that is quick to assemble and will last for a long time with minimal maintenance and running costs?
Don’t be that guy who starts building without having first a complete picture of everything involved in the construction process (and after).
There is no excuse for lack of knowledge… we even offer self-building guides to help you get the insights you need before you start ordering any service… think about that… build once, build smart.