Flat-pack house, log cabin, call it what you will; the Big Red Barn (BRB) in Aughamore, Co Mayo, is constructing modular homes at a rapid pace.
With half the team in the workshop and the other half out on site, Donal Byrne’s company is constructing one house a week.
At this year’s National Ploughing Championships he launched a two-storey, 1,500sq ft house designed to be a family home no different to one built out of bricks and mortar.
“It’s a steel frame but it’s got insulation, is wired and pre-plumbed. When we started off it was mainly one and two beds. Now it’s all three and four beds, so people are using them as a permanent residence,” Donal Byrne tells Irish Country Living.
There is no modular housing standard in Ireland, which I am trying to introduce. There is just one building standard; blocks and mortar
The part-time farmer has been featured before when he started out by constructing the BRB for events. He supplied the stand for Lidl at the Ploughing previously.
Donal Byrne with the Big Red Barn's one-bedroom modular home at the factory in Swinford, Co Mayo.
However, that is now just a small part of a rural business that has its sights set on serious growth.
“If you come in now [mid-August] and place an order with me you wouldn’t have a house until January. But we are putting on an extension so we can do twice the output, from November and December onwards we will be able to do two a week. The barn is a tiny piece of this business now even though it’s The Big Red Barn.”
The modular homes come with a 25-year warranty and it is all manufactured in Mayo, supplied by mainly Irish companies with timber coming from Sweden.
Big Red Barn's one-bedroom modular home layout.
“We keep them a foot off the ground so there is no rising damp, dry rot, no radon. You can put a rendered finish on it. You don’t have to go timber. There is exterior insulation and colours that can go on it.”
When a customer buys one of the BRB’s modular homes they must sort out planning permission, a connection to the grid, water and a septic tank themselves. The customer can also put down the concrete pad needed or the BRB team will do it for you.
“It’s very simple, little concrete pads foot by foot, one under each leg. There’s 12 under the one-bed house. Three and half metres of concrete in total. Fitted, you’re talking €2,000 for the concrete,” says Donal.
The house arrives with the windows, kitchen and everything fitted. The only thing that needs to be added is furniture. Construction can take two days to a month, depending on what size the house is.
“The one-bed starts at €42,000 plus VAT. A two-bed is around €50,000 and so on. Timber is a natural insulator. There is a Kingspan roof and Kingspan in the walls and in the floor. There is Bluetooth-controlled electric underfloor heating if you want it.”
Idea
The idea behind this year’s new product, costing €150,000 plus VAT came from a meeting with Mayo county council. Donal was told that the timber finish didn’t fit with the indigenous look of the area. So the latest product has a rendered finish to fit with planning regulations.
“They said they wanted a higher-pitched roof. They don’t like the deck at the front, they wanted slates rather than corrugation and a rendered finish. It took me a while to put all that together.”
Passion
Donal’s passion to see modular homes become part of the solution to Ireland’s housing needs is infectious. He wants to set up a modular homes society to regulate building standards.
“How many hurricanes and storms have there been in the last few years? Not one of our houses has budged because we meet the American standard. Snow loads and wind loads are 40% greater in America. We meet that standard.
“There is no modular housing standard in Ireland, which I am trying to introduce. There is just one building standard; blocks and mortar. In America they have 50 states and one standard applies. They have a modular homes society and I want to form one here.”
The BRB has shipped a few houses to the States already and Donal’s plan is to grow that market to not only one where he ships houses to, but one where he has a manufacturing facility.
The US
“I visited Pennsylvania, and they have 35 factories in the one state making modular homes and they are only 12% of the market and they can’t keep up. They are not afraid of an Irish person. The plan is to set up a factory over there because it is not financially viable to keep shipping.
“In America they would call our system ‘panelised construction’; one panel slots into the other. When you talk about a modular house in America it’s like taking a house and cutting it down the middle, putting half of it in one truck and half in the other. But they have no ditches or trees.
Big Red Barn's one-bedroom modular home layout.
“I prefer our system. I call their house the ‘wonder bra house’ because from the outside it’s super sexy but when you strip it back there’s nothing behind it, really light timber and wool insulation. Wool has stopped being used in walls for years in Ireland because it gets damp.
"But it looks like a normal house over there and they are not afraid of it.”
Beef
Part of the logic behind targeting the American market is Brexit. Donal, a beef farmer himself, is very aware of the importance that farming has on the rural economy and says that 90% of his customer base are farmers.
“Anyone that thinks Ireland has anything other than a rural economy is for the birds, this is the countryside, Dublin is tiny.
“I rely on the west of Ireland and all the farmers throughout. God bless them, when they have money they will spend it.”
BRB suppliers:
Albany PaintGurteen Kitchens, BallyhaunisWalsh Timber Flooring, KiltimaghCT ElectricHurst Heating and PlumbingThompson Butler Steel LtdNewell RoofingJordan Windows>> Case study: Nigel Hogan, Tullow, Co Carlow
“We put in a two-bedroom modular home during the summer. It’s 15.5m long by 8m wide. There are two bedrooms, a utility, bathroom and kitchen. It’s shocking warm inside it, there’s underfloor heating but I can’t see us ever having to turn it on.
“Building a modular home was more practical for us, what was the point in building a €200,000 or €300,000 house with a mortgage for the rest of your life? We got a loan out of the credit union. My homeplace is right opposite the house. It’s a five-bed house and at some stage we might swap houses.
“This is steel frame, any of the other ones we looked at were all timber with no insulation.
“There’s a 25 year warranty on the modular house. There’s no varnishing or maintaining as such on it. I think if you were minding it, it could last around 70 years.”
Build
“I think it was 10 weeks from when we signed off the design before the house arrived.
“The Big Red Barn team arrived on a Tuesday and they were finished two weeks later. The walls arrived on one load. The structure of the house was two days. The roof was another day. The slowest bit was the corners and things on the inside. They did the kitchen, plumbing and electrical work.
“The only things we had to buy were the appliances and they put them in. Nothing was a problem, if you wanted to split a room in four the boys would do it.
“The bedrooms are huge. We have a superking bed in the main bedroom and you’d fit another double in with it. There’s a built-in wardrobe that you could winter 20 cattle in. I like the balcony, it’s fierce handy for sitting on in the evenings or drying clothes.”
Flat-pack house, log cabin, call it what you will; the Big Red Barn (BRB) in Aughamore, Co Mayo, is constructing modular homes at a rapid pace.
With half the team in the workshop and the other half out on site, Donal Byrne’s company is constructing one house a week.
At this year’s National Ploughing Championships he launched a two-storey, 1,500sq ft house designed to be a family home no different to one built out of bricks and mortar.
“It’s a steel frame but it’s got insulation, is wired and pre-plumbed. When we started off it was mainly one and two beds. Now it’s all three and four beds, so people are using them as a permanent residence,” Donal Byrne tells Irish Country Living.
There is no modular housing standard in Ireland, which I am trying to introduce. There is just one building standard; blocks and mortar
The part-time farmer has been featured before when he started out by constructing the BRB for events. He supplied the stand for Lidl at the Ploughing previously.
Donal Byrne with the Big Red Barn's one-bedroom modular home at the factory in Swinford, Co Mayo.
However, that is now just a small part of a rural business that has its sights set on serious growth.
“If you come in now [mid-August] and place an order with me you wouldn’t have a house until January. But we are putting on an extension so we can do twice the output, from November and December onwards we will be able to do two a week. The barn is a tiny piece of this business now even though it’s The Big Red Barn.”
The modular homes come with a 25-year warranty and it is all manufactured in Mayo, supplied by mainly Irish companies with timber coming from Sweden.
Big Red Barn's one-bedroom modular home layout.
“We keep them a foot off the ground so there is no rising damp, dry rot, no radon. You can put a rendered finish on it. You don’t have to go timber. There is exterior insulation and colours that can go on it.”
When a customer buys one of the BRB’s modular homes they must sort out planning permission, a connection to the grid, water and a septic tank themselves. The customer can also put down the concrete pad needed or the BRB team will do it for you.
“It’s very simple, little concrete pads foot by foot, one under each leg. There’s 12 under the one-bed house. Three and half metres of concrete in total. Fitted, you’re talking €2,000 for the concrete,” says Donal.
The house arrives with the windows, kitchen and everything fitted. The only thing that needs to be added is furniture. Construction can take two days to a month, depending on what size the house is.
“The one-bed starts at €42,000 plus VAT. A two-bed is around €50,000 and so on. Timber is a natural insulator. There is a Kingspan roof and Kingspan in the walls and in the floor. There is Bluetooth-controlled electric underfloor heating if you want it.”
Idea
The idea behind this year’s new product, costing €150,000 plus VAT came from a meeting with Mayo county council. Donal was told that the timber finish didn’t fit with the indigenous look of the area. So the latest product has a rendered finish to fit with planning regulations.
“They said they wanted a higher-pitched roof. They don’t like the deck at the front, they wanted slates rather than corrugation and a rendered finish. It took me a while to put all that together.”
Passion
Donal’s passion to see modular homes become part of the solution to Ireland’s housing needs is infectious. He wants to set up a modular homes society to regulate building standards.
“How many hurricanes and storms have there been in the last few years? Not one of our houses has budged because we meet the American standard. Snow loads and wind loads are 40% greater in America. We meet that standard.
“There is no modular housing standard in Ireland, which I am trying to introduce. There is just one building standard; blocks and mortar. In America they have 50 states and one standard applies. They have a modular homes society and I want to form one here.”
The BRB has shipped a few houses to the States already and Donal’s plan is to grow that market to not only one where he ships houses to, but one where he has a manufacturing facility.
The US
“I visited Pennsylvania, and they have 35 factories in the one state making modular homes and they are only 12% of the market and they can’t keep up. They are not afraid of an Irish person. The plan is to set up a factory over there because it is not financially viable to keep shipping.
“In America they would call our system ‘panelised construction’; one panel slots into the other. When you talk about a modular house in America it’s like taking a house and cutting it down the middle, putting half of it in one truck and half in the other. But they have no ditches or trees.
Big Red Barn's one-bedroom modular home layout.
“I prefer our system. I call their house the ‘wonder bra house’ because from the outside it’s super sexy but when you strip it back there’s nothing behind it, really light timber and wool insulation. Wool has stopped being used in walls for years in Ireland because it gets damp.
"But it looks like a normal house over there and they are not afraid of it.”
Beef
Part of the logic behind targeting the American market is Brexit. Donal, a beef farmer himself, is very aware of the importance that farming has on the rural economy and says that 90% of his customer base are farmers.
“Anyone that thinks Ireland has anything other than a rural economy is for the birds, this is the countryside, Dublin is tiny.
“I rely on the west of Ireland and all the farmers throughout. God bless them, when they have money they will spend it.”
BRB suppliers:
Albany PaintGurteen Kitchens, BallyhaunisWalsh Timber Flooring, KiltimaghCT ElectricHurst Heating and PlumbingThompson Butler Steel LtdNewell RoofingJordan Windows>> Case study: Nigel Hogan, Tullow, Co Carlow
“We put in a two-bedroom modular home during the summer. It’s 15.5m long by 8m wide. There are two bedrooms, a utility, bathroom and kitchen. It’s shocking warm inside it, there’s underfloor heating but I can’t see us ever having to turn it on.
“Building a modular home was more practical for us, what was the point in building a €200,000 or €300,000 house with a mortgage for the rest of your life? We got a loan out of the credit union. My homeplace is right opposite the house. It’s a five-bed house and at some stage we might swap houses.
“This is steel frame, any of the other ones we looked at were all timber with no insulation.
“There’s a 25 year warranty on the modular house. There’s no varnishing or maintaining as such on it. I think if you were minding it, it could last around 70 years.”
Build
“I think it was 10 weeks from when we signed off the design before the house arrived.
“The Big Red Barn team arrived on a Tuesday and they were finished two weeks later. The walls arrived on one load. The structure of the house was two days. The roof was another day. The slowest bit was the corners and things on the inside. They did the kitchen, plumbing and electrical work.
“The only things we had to buy were the appliances and they put them in. Nothing was a problem, if you wanted to split a room in four the boys would do it.
“The bedrooms are huge. We have a superking bed in the main bedroom and you’d fit another double in with it. There’s a built-in wardrobe that you could winter 20 cattle in. I like the balcony, it’s fierce handy for sitting on in the evenings or drying clothes.”
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