The System | How Stavhaus Modular Homes Extend

One module

Four by eight metres.

Thirty two square metres of floor, a frame that carries the load on its posts, and a connection detail at each post head. Everything we build starts here.

Solo · 32 m²

Add one

The second lands beside the first.

It arrives finished and is craned onto its own pads in a morning. The posts meet, the joint is bolted, and only on the last day does anyone open the wall between.

Duo · 64 m²

Turn one

Turned, it makes shelter.

A module set at ninety degrees gives the plan a corner, and the corner gives you a courtyard out of the wind. Same module, different weather.

Duo L · 64 m²

Room for the family

Three, and the kitchen becomes the middle.

The living space stops being one room doing every job and becomes a centre, with the bedrooms in a quieter wing off it.

Nest 3 · 96 m²

Keep going

Four around a courtyard.

A second bathroom, a study that is a real room, and a sheltered side you can eat on. Five modules is where a fixed plan stops and Flow begins.

Nest 4 · 128 m²

Plan view. Indicative.

Why it holds

A joint designed to be undone.

Bolted post heads

Modules meet through a repeatable steel connector at the top of each post. It is torqued, inspected and reversible. Nothing structural is glued or welded shut.

Services in one spine

Water, waste and electrical runs sit in a single zone along the module edge. Extending means connecting at one point, not chasing walls across the house.

Load stays on the posts

Walls carry nothing. That is what lets a wall between two modules be opened later without propping the roof or calling an engineer back.

On the land

Nine points, and air underneath.

A Stavhaus sits on point foundations. Not a poured slab, not an excavated basement.

Water keeps running where it always ran. Roots stay where they are. In spring the meadow comes back up to the edge of the house instead of stopping at a concrete apron. And if the house is ever taken away, the plot goes back to being a plot.

Photograph needed

Close view of the gap between the underside of a module and the ground, with grass growing up to the pads.

Material

Built to weather, not to stay new.

A timber house detailed properly does not need protecting from the weather. It needs to be allowed to meet it.

Douglas fir, left natural

Vertical Douglas boards with a shadow gap, unpainted. It weathers from honey to silver over about three years, unevenly, and needs nothing done to it while it does.

Anthracite, RAL 7016

Every frame, the door, the roof edge and the lights are one colour. A single dark line around the timber is what keeps a small building from looking busy.

Flat roof, hidden drainage

No gutters on the elevation, no downpipes down the corner. Water leaves through the roof edge, which is why the silhouette stays a clean rectangle.

Materials & finish

What the standard house is made of.

Every module leaves the factory to one specification. These are the parts we do not cut, because they are what a timber house lives or fails on. Everything here is included in the turnkey price, not an upgrade list.

Timber cladding: Vertical Douglas fir on a ventilated batten, shadow-gap joints, left untreated. Silvers evenly over about three years and asks for nothing while it does.
Windows: Aluminium-clad timber, triple glazed and thermally broken. Warm wood inside, a hard anthracite face outside that never needs painting. Deep reveals, so the light falls softly into the room.
Large sliding doors: Aluminium lift-and-slide doors up to full module width, triple glazed, on a flush floor-level threshold. The living room opens onto the deck without a step to trip on.
External blinds: Louvre solar blinds mounted outside the glass, anthracite, guided in side tracks. They stop the summer sun before it reaches the room, which is how a glazed south wall stays comfortable.
Insulation: Wood-fibre and cellulose, not foam. A breathable, low-carbon build-up that buffers moisture and, because it is dense, holds the heat out on the longest days as well as in on the coldest nights.
Exterior lighting: Minimal anthracite wall downlights, warm 2700 K, one line of light along the deck and the door. Enough to arrive by, dark enough to keep the sky.
Trim & frames: Every frame, fascia and fixing in one colour, anthracite RAL 7016. A single dark line around the timber is what keeps a small building from looking busy.
Flat roof: Warm flat roof with drainage hidden inside the edge, solar-ready without penetrations. No gutters down the elevation, so the silhouette stays a clean rectangle.

Finishes can be varied on request — a darker cladding oil, a different glazing spec, no external blinds. We will tell you what a change does to the price and the delivery before you commit to it.

Energy

Off the grid, if you choose it.

Every module leaves our factory solar ready, whether you order the panels or not. The flat roof takes a ballasted array without penetrations, the cable route is run, and the space for a battery is left in the service spine. None of it is charged for.

What it buys, if you take it, is not really about energy. It is about which plots you are allowed to want. A piece of land with no connection stops being a compromise and becomes the cheaper, quieter option.

What choosing it buys

Freedom over where you build. On remote sites, bringing power in often costs more than the module standing on it, and that comparison is the whole argument.

What we will not promise

Panels alone do not carry a northern house through December. Independence means panels, a properly sized battery and a wood stove together. From four modules up we usually recommend a connection, and we say so before you buy.

What we do not claim

Where the system stops.

Five modules is the practical limit for a fixed plan. Extending assumes the plot and the permit allow it, and a module has to be liftable into place. We check all three before you buy the first one, because finding out later is the expensive version of this conversation.

Ask about your plot