Genius Homes are expert manufacturers of smart prefabricated homes. Their transportable designs are constructed in their Timaru factory and delivered to locations across the South Island.

The company was recently involved in the challenging design and construction of a home to be located at Kaka Point, the Caitlins, Southland. “We build in the factory, split and then transport to site,” explains Jeremy Richards, Sales and Marketing Manager of Genius Homes. “This particular project was a platinum style home split into three pieces — one living block, a linkway lounge type block and a bedroom block out the other side. This meant three different shapes transported in three different pieces.”

In addition, at just 90m from breaking surf, the home would need to meet sea spray zone certification requirements. While Genius commonly uses a steel chassis for their homes, for this project they opted for XLam’s Cross Laminated Flooring — a non-corrosive solution that met sea spray zone certification without the additional work that steel would require.

The choice of XLam’s CLT Floor System aided the construction programme of the home. “One of the key advantages we see is that the speed of production is a lot quicker,” says Richards. “The XLam floor took about three days off the production time because it’s basically the whole chassis. It usually takes four days, but we did this in one day.”

The XLam floor system also proved ideal for transportation. “It works very well when we’re splitting homes because of its structural strength,” says Jeremy. “The home travelled over 500km and it travelled very well. Basically no rework was required. We put that down to the structural strength of the XLam of the floor.”

The smooth result of the challenging project has lead Jeremy to specify XLam for other similar projects. “This was our first job with XLam and we’re really happy with it. We’ve now got a few orders with them,” he says. “We’re keen to carry on with the XLam product.”