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Gartec features in BBC2’s Building Dream Homes

Building Dream Homes follows some of the nation’s architects leading the way in ground-breaking design, as they battle with builders, blueprints and the clients who hire them. Gartec were approached back in April to supply and install a home lift for a future-proofed upside-down house featured in the show, which was aired in June.

The progress of the new build home, commissioned and project managed by Marianne Cowpe from Westra Nook, near Cardiff was filmed for the first five shows in the series taking the project from planning, to digging the foundations to completing the structural build.

Unfortunately though, disaster struck in episode three as Marianne was rushed to hospital where she had to stay for two months, leaving James Stroud of Loyn & Co Architects to take over as Project Manager, with assistance from Marianne’s husband John.

The programme makers became aware that Marianne would be unable to walk when she returned from hospital so the installation of Gartec’s Home Lift (Aritco 6000) was brought forward to allow Marianne to inspect the entire project when she returned from hospital. As a consequence, episode four featured Gartec for much of the programme, showing our engineers installing the lift and getting it ready for Marianne who arrived in a wheelchair, and was taken up in the lift to see the upper level of her new home.

The spacious 6000 was originally specified by Marianne as a way of future-proofing, giving them the ability to move heavy objects, and to add an element of luxury until the time came that they might rely on it. Who knew that time would come so soon? Marianne asked about its capacity: ‘What I’m worried about is, will it take all the wine!’ (…We can confirm Marianne will be good up to 500kg!)

SHOTS FROM THE SHOW

The whole series of Building Dream Homes is still available now to watch on iPlayer – you can see us from 13:50 minutes onwards in episode four. Also take a look at our Twitter timeline for more info about the project!