The week-long series will be broadcast on terrestrial television in summer 2004 while a longer series, detailing the technicalities of building a prefabricated home, has been commissioned by Discovery Home and Leisure.
HOUSE RACE will take place in St Martin's Square; Birmingham's stunning new Bullring shopping centre and will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people every day. The event will see two families compete to build two new houses from scratch in just seven days. South Wales-based timber-frame innovator, Benfield ATT, will work with the contestants through the design, engineering, production and erection of their unique self-builds by supplying a specialist Timber Frame Design & Build team for each family. The families will be aided by a project manager and two teams of students.
The winning family will win a fabulous prize - £30,000 towards their own self-build project. When added to the skills they'll learn from the Benfield ATT team during the week, the winner will be able to build a home they could otherwise only dream about.
The format was devised, in association with Carlton, by Michele Newman, from Newman Productions, a new independent production company based in Birmingham in collaboration with Dr Michael Benfield, Managing Director of Benfield ATT.
HOUSE RACE series producer Mike Burch: This is a daring new format, combining the best elements of popular programmes, part game show, reality show, makeover show and challenge show, all combined in a big public event.
HOUSE RACE will provide an information service for viewers who want to design and build their dream home, but it is much more than that. Viewers will share each family's highs and lows, with lots of fun, drama and excitement as the week progresses.
Working closely with Carlton, Benfield ATT Managing Director, Dr Michael Benfield, added: HOUSE RACE captures the excitement and energy of the ever-growing Self-Build market. Increasingly people are realising the benefits of this experience. Self-builds, generally, can be up to thirty-five percent cheaper than buying on the property market (depending on how much work the self-builder does), and the end result is a dream home, designed by yourself?.
Ninety percent of all self-builds in the UK are of timber frame construction and the series team has carefully thought-through the idea. Offering useful information and entertainment to viewers, HOUSE RACE aims to be a worthwhile experience for the families, and will help the general public to realise that self-building is a satisfying and rewarding process.
Between 1991 and 2000, the number of people opting to self-build doubled to 20,000. But over the last few years the rate of increase has multiplied and it's now estimated that almost one in four of all new detached homes are self-build. Dr Benfield added "As society is still awaiting for the deflation of house prices, the self-build approach adopted by HOUSE RACE offers a very viable, exhilarating and rewarding alternative to dealing with the property market"?.
The house design and timber frame will be supplied and donated by Benfield ATT, who have been involved with the project from the beginning. Dr Benfield brought in Glenalmond's Ultrajoist for their specialist ultra-dry timber for the highest quality timber frame construction.
