Huf Haus GmbH & Co. KG is a German company operating worldwide and based in Hartenfels,

Westerwald The Westerwald (; literally 'Western forest') is a low mountain range on the right bank of the river Rhine in the German federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is a part of the Rhenish Massif ( or Rhenish ...

region, that manufactures

prefabricated home Prefabricated homes, often referred to as prefab homes or simply prefabs, are specialist dwelling types of prefabricated building, which are manufactured off-site in advance, usually in standard sections that can be easily shipped and assembled. ...

s. Huf Haus is the world's leading firm in selling houses in the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

architectural tradition based on the German ''

Fachwerk Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

'' ("Frame House") design. The construction allows individual floor plans, including for residential as well as office buildings. The homes, also called Huf houses, are available as

zero-energy building A Zero Energy Building (ZEB), also known as a Net Zero Energy (NZE) building, is a building with net zero energy consumption, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is equal to the amount of renewable energy c ...

History

In 1912, Johann Huf founded a carpentry workshop in the small village of

Krümmel Krümmel is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a community belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'' – in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The community belongs to the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' of Selters, a kind of collective municipality. Geog ...

in the Westerwald. A year later, the enterprise moved to Hartenfels. In 1948 his son Franz Huf took over management of the enterprise, and enlarged it to a supra-regional provider of carpenter's works, e. g. churches in the

Rhineland The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section. Term Historically, the Rhinelands ...

, the large post administration office in Bonn (1950) as well as the German and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

pavilions at

Expo 58 Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (french: Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles de 1958, nl, Brusselse Wereldtentoonstelling van 1958), was a world's fair held on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Brussels, Bel ...

. The so-called "Huf Fachwerkhaus 2000" was designed in 1972 together with architect Manfred Adams. The principles of this construction are still the standard in all Huf houses. Since 1996, grandsons Georg and Thomas Huf have led the company and brought the products to the world market. They also established "The Huf Haus Village", a collection of Huf family houses, which represent the possibilities of building Huf houses. On 20 September 2011, Thomas Huf died aged 51.

New designs

Near the end of 2009, Huf Haus started newly designed houses which the company calls "evolutionary" in its post-and-beam architecture but "revolutionary" in energy efficiency. Because the expressive symbiosis of wood and glass finds recognition at major international architecture and design competitions, and among Huf Haus clients, who also acknowledge that it can be individually designed, the main stylistic elements have not changed. Despite the generous use of glass the Huf Haus houses require only a heating rate of 34 W/m² (at Hartenfels, Germany). The main reasons are: *All constructional wood elements are fitted with a heat-insulation layer put together at the factory - this reduces thermal bridges. *The already well-insulated walls have been redesigned. The walls are thicker now and their depth can be varied depending on the climatic region. The material used is tailored to the location, so that an adequate heat insulation is achieved. *The glass walls have 51 mm triple glazing with a

heat transfer coefficient In thermodynamics, the heat transfer coefficient or film coefficient, or film effectiveness, is the proportionality constant between the heat flux and the thermodynamic driving force for the flow of heat (i.e., the temperature difference, ). ...

(U-value) of 0.6 W/m²K. *Home technology is based on a

heat pump A heat pump is a device that can heat a building (or part of a building) by transferring thermal energy from the outside using a refrigeration cycle. Many heat pumps can also operate in the opposite direction, cooling the building by removing h ...

, electronically regulated heating systems, under floor heating pipes laid very closely together, a highly efficient ventilation system and independent domestic hot water pumps, so that the independent heating system can be switched off during the summer months. *A large

photovoltaic Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially us ...

system across nearly the whole roof.

Exports

The company delivers around the world and they restrict their production to 200 houses a year to keep the unique character of the houses. Of these, about 50 a year are exported to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

(UK). As a result, an independent "Huf Haus owners' club" has been established there. Since 2009 the official sales office for the US market has been dotGreen Inc., based in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, Ohio.

Awards

Huf Haus products have won several architectural prizes, including: * 1977 "Haus des Jahres" (house of the year) by the government of

Rheinland-Pfalz Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...

, Germany; * 2002 Housing Design Award of the

Royal Institute of British Architects The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three suppl ...

, UK; * 2001, 2009 Deutscher Solarpreis (German Solar Award - a prize for the best project on renewable energy in Germany) by EUROSOLAR e. V. in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

, Germany; * 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004 prize of "The National HomeBuilder Design Awards". This house in

Walton-on-Thames Walton-on-Thames, locally known as Walton, is a market town on the south bank of the Thames in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey, England. Walton forms part of the Greater London built-up area, within the KT postcode and is served by a wide ran ...

in the

has also been featured on the

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

programme ''

Grand Designs ''Grand Designs'' is a British television series produced by Boundless and broadcast on Channel 4 which features unusual and often elaborate architectural homebuilding projects. The programme has been presented by Kevin McCloud since it first ...

''.

References

External links