Archive for category: Latest News

Why the octogenarian engineer Max Fordham claims ventilation is the worst excess of the building industry.

Max Fordham’s house is “simple and practical” and mostly all natural.

There has long been skepticism about Passive House, or Passivhaus in the original German. Passivhaus expert Monte Paulsen listed some of the misconceptions in a Green Building Advisor article a few years ago, including “too expensive” or “too stuffy” or “too complicated” or “too rigid” or “too ugly”. But in the years since it has become clear that none of these are true, and a lot of those skeptics have been won over.

According to Jason Walsh, writing in Passive House Plus, physicist and engineer Max Fordham used to be a bit of a skeptic and critic of the Passive House concept. But he independently developed his own approach to building energy efficient buildings, and it was looking more and more like Passive house. Fordham tells Passive House Plus that ventilation is the source of “the worst excesses of the building industry.” He then goes on about one of my regular gripes, radiant underfloor heating:

In particular, once you’ve solved the ventilation problem you’ve got a building that doesn’t really need any heating. What’s happening a lot with passive houses we’re seeing built is that people are demanding things like underfloor heating… I think it’s a conservatism: people are afraid, but it’s [passive house] then being adopted and people are adding underfloor heating to the brief. That’s the worst kind of heating to have, in a way, because if you have a thermally heavy [passive] building it doesn’t actually need any heating. So, if you don’t need any heating, you’d better not put in a heating system that is difficult to control and slow to control. It may look very luxurious and nice, but you can’t really turn it off. It’s just wasting heat.

Justin Bere, architect for the house, explains a bit of Max Fordham’s conversion:

Throughout his career he has, in his own way, developed his own version of passive house. He was on the same wavelength but didn’t know about it, and in this he brought together what he was doing and what the Passive House Institute was doing, saying: ‘Were both on the same mission to fight for the planet.’

One very interesting thing about this house is that it is on three levels, and there doesn’t appear to be much of a concession to the fact that Max Fordham is in his eighties, other than the stairs do not have winders in them. Jason Walsh writes that “there is a focus on accessibility; it is possible to live entirely on the ground floor, for example, while cork flooring provides some safety against falls.” And the bathroom door on the ground floor opens outwards, but that is about it, and it is a tight ground floor suite.

But it is a very small mews site and Fordham almost seems to be treating this more as a physics experiment than a house. He tells Passive House Plus:

I’m just getting some feedback on the energy use. It’s very interesting: the top has the most glass and is getting the heat. It’s very cosy. The ground floor tends to need a little heat so I’ve just written a note that says that we need to increase the internal air flow. It’s very exciting getting some real feedback.

Readers should visit Passive House Plus for the technical details, but the house hits only .38 air changes per hour (PH limit is 0.6) and costs almost nothing to heat. It is built with natural and renewable materials including wood fibre insulation and wood cladding. There is a little electric heater coil in the Heat Recover Ventilator and a heat pump domestic hot water system.

One of the reasons that there used to be so many of the misconceptions about Passive House is that there really wasn’t a lot of experience with them. That has now changed. The builder, Bow Tie Construction, notes that some architects still don’t understand it.

Yesterday I spoke to an architect who said to me, ‘I don’t want to have to learn all this [in advance]. I want you to show me.’ One really interesting thing that comes to mind is that we try to specialise in passive house but [some] architects look at the costs and see us as too expensive or unapproachable. We’d like to see more co-operation between builders like us and architects.

When builders, engineers, architects and clients all understand what they are doing and why, most of those problems and extra costs will just disappear.

by Lloyd Alter

SOURCE: Treehugger

Rare archive images showing engineers working on a secret construction project that became pivotal to Britain’s success at the D-Day landings have been released as part of a new film marking the 75^th anniversary of the campaign.

The Mulberry harbours were artificially-constructed floating docks that enabled ships carrying vital supplies, military vehicles and troops to safely anchor off the French coast, on a stretch of land lacking any safe harbours. They were designed and constructed in secrecy by around 200,000 British engineers in the seven months leading up to the landing in June 1944, and helped soldiers who recall ‘fighting the sea’ at the same time as they battled against the German army.

British construction company Wates Group has now unearthed a series of rare images from its archive of its engineers constructing the harbours in the lead up to one of the most significant moments in the Allied war effort. Wates made a significant contribution during the war building aerodromes, army camps and factories. Having developed a specialty in pre-cast concrete structures, Wates supplied the concrete pier and pierhead pontoons for the Mulberry harbours.

The harbours were designed and built at yards and docks across the country including at Southampton, in Mitcham and the West India Docks, before they were assembled at Selsey in Sussex and towed across the channel to Normandy in sections after completion in April 1944.

Wates was among an alliance of British companies that joined forces to build the harbours. Wates was particularly involved in the construction of the concrete piers and pontoons known as ‘Beetles’. While one harbour was destroyed in a storm after just a couple of days, the second was operational for 10 months, making a significant contribution to the Allied war effort. In total, the harbour enabled 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles and 4 million tonnes of supplies to land before it was decommissioned.

As the international community marks the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Wates has worked with D-Day Revisited – a charity established to commemorate the anniversary – to create a film celebrating the harbours.

MEMORIES OF MULBERRY  click for video

The film, titled “Memories of Mulberry”, includes rare photographs from the Wates archives, showing engineers working on the huge concrete and steel parts, as well as insight from leading historian Guy Walters.

Ted Cordery, 95 and from Oxford, who served on board the Royal Navy’s HMS Belfast from 1943-1944 as a Leading Seaman Torpedoman, is one of two D-Day veterans interviewed for the film about their memories of the historic landings. He said: “When I look back on my career in the Navy, I felt I spent more time fighting the sea than I did the Germans. You could never rely on it. It always turned one way or the other. The harbours minimised the possibility of this and you can’t have a better contribution than that in my opinion.”

Jack Quinn, also 95 and from Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire, who was a Corporal in the Royal Marines, added: “We wondered what they were at first, when we saw them. ‘What are they going to do with them? They are going to load men and vehicles on them.’ We were surprised they towed them all that way. But the soldiers were glad to get in a lorry and drive off a Mulberry harbour instead of getting in a landing craft and getting wet through. Speed was the essence.”

Historian and author Guy Walters added: “When you think of inventions during the Second World War you think of the bouncing bomb, you think of radar, but for my money Mulberry harbours are right up there. They’re a classic example of British ingenuity and inventiveness.”

The video, which has been published on the Wates website, ends by thanking the servicemen and women who played their part.

James Wates CBE, Chairman of the Wates Group, said: “Wates has a proud history as an innovator in construction, and nowhere is this more evident than our involvement with building the Mulberry harbours. I remember my grandfather [Sir Ronald Wates] speaking to me about them when I was a boy, and I know he was so proud of what we were able to do.

“As we mark the 75th anniversary of the D Day landing, we look back with pride at our role in bringing an end to World War Two, and supporting our armed forces. Our purpose today remains as it was then: to work together to inspire better ways of creating the places, communities and businesses of tomorrow.”

To this day Wates Group continues to support the work of the armed forces, working with the Ministry of Defence and its supply chain – including building the base of the new Lightning jets at RAF Marham; BAE System Submarines’ new training base for apprentices; and maintaining housing for services personnel and their families.  Wates has also pledged to honour the Armed Forces Covenant, including a commitment to provide work opportunities for veterans.

Wates Group

The Australian construction industry needs to radically shake up its approach to construction to help save the environment, experts say.

A more timber-heavy and mostly off-site construction process could be the way forward, Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Smart Modern Construction at Western Sydney University David Chandler said.

He will appeal to the timber and construction industries to adopt off-site construction manufacturing, or OSCM, already popular in Europe, by 2030 at the Timber Offsite Construction conference on June 17.

“The big difference between the [Australia and Europe] are the European businesses are very large businesses, in large markets and very close to each other,” he said.

“In Australia we have the opposite, small businesses in moderately sized markets far apart from each other.”

By building off-site, the construction process becomes more streamlined, materials and energy efficient, and faster, Adjunct Professor Chandler said.

“The moment you begin to transform the process of manufacturing building, you have to make less waste. And the less waste, the better for the environment,” he said.

To ease the likely advent of smart homes, Adjunct Professor Chandler said taking an OSCM approach was needed.

“[Buildings are] becoming filled with all sorts of sensors. They will record data about if they’re leaking [heat], cracking, all sorts of things,” he said.

“It’s very hard to put smart in buildings after they’re made, you need to put it in as you’re building them and if we don’t go down an OSCM pathway it will be very hard to put the smart in buildings.”

25 King in Brisbane is mostly made of timber, with some conventional material like concrete used sparingly. Photo: Aurecon

The resurgence of enthusiasm within the industry for the age-old building material timber was helping to enable this pathway, Aurecon major projects director Ralph Belpario said.

Aurecon has shown an interest in using timber in its construction projects, including in its new Brisbane headquarters, 25 King. The 10-storey building is mostly made from cross-laminated timber and glued-laminated timber.

“Timber is an enabler,” he said. “It’s lighter, easier to handle, less cranage, the material is easier to work.”

Mr Belpario said at present, building a tower with mostly timber attracted a price premium but it was worth it.

“That will alleviate as it becomes more popular,” he said. “At the moment there is a limited supply chain.

“What we need is a groundswell so more people invest in the technology.”

Just one company is locally producing cross-laminated timber in Australia.

Wood is better for the environment than conventional materials concrete and steel, the production of which results in significant carbon emissions. The cement, concrete and steel industries were working towards reducing their impact but Mr Belpario said it still didn’t measure up.

“Sustainable timber is the only true sustainable building material,” he said. “Everything else we use to build at some point comes out of the ground. It’s the only material that you can plant, grow, harvest and grow again.”

Timber is lighter and easier to handle, creating efficiencies in the building process. Photo: Supplied

The third change the industry needed to take on was a set of national building standards aimed at minimising energy use within homes and reducing the impact a changing climate would have on them, Timberlink Australia executive general manager of innovation Duncan Mayes said.

He was championing a change to national building codes to outlaw aluminium window and door frames in favour of aluminium-coated timber frames.

It was a small change, Mr Mayes said, but it would patch a key thermal weakness in homes, therefore reducing the energy needed for heating and cooling.

“Double-glazed glass can reduce the temperature, but the weakness is now the frames,” he said. “I only need to see it from my own energy bill. They provide me with a monthly consumption of how much I use and also the greenhouse gas emissions.

“You can see the direct impact of badly performing buildings. If we want to drive towards a significant reduction in our carbon footprint, we need to dramatically reduce the amount of thermal movement in our homes.”

A buried senate committee report last year called for national building standards to homogenise hodgepodge rules around Australia, and lead a top-down effort to deal with the climate crisis.

SOURCE: Domain

Funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund ‘Transforming Construction’, the three-year project – Automating Concrete Construction (ACORN) – will develop a holistic approach to the manufacture, assembly, reuse, and deconstruction of concrete buildings, leading to a healthier, safer, built environment.

The research involves Dr John Orr, Lecturer in Concrete Structures, who is working alongside colleagues at the University of Bath and the University of Dundee. ACORN will capitalise on the computational and robotics expertise of the research team, to create an end-to-end digital process to automate the manufacture of concrete buildings, capitalising on the recent proliferation of affordable robotics and bringing them into an industry ripe for a step-change in sustainability and productivity.

The construction sector is responsible for nearly half of the UK’s carbon emissions and concrete alone for 5% of global CO₂ emissions. The widespread use of flat panel formwork for concrete leads to materially inefficient prismatic shapes for the beams, columns, and floor slabs in our buildings. This practice, which has been around since Roman times, is a key driver behind the high embodied carbon emissions associated with concrete structures. As much as half of the concrete in a building could be saved, if only we approached our use of the material in a different way.

The ACORN team are working towards creating a culture that is built on the concept of using enough material, and no more. The team believe that by using innovative digital tools and techniques to optimise the shape and reinforcement at the design phase, as well as using robotics to create bespoke formwork and reinforcement during construction, a new generation of buildings will begin to dominate – buildings that use material only where it is needed, and that are manufactured in safe, quality-controlled and highly productive off-site facilities.

“Something as simple as allowing beams, columns and floor slabs to have the shape they need to take load, rather than the shape they need to be easily formed, allows a complete rethink of the way material is used in our buildings,” said Dr Orr. “We can begin to ask exciting questions about their shape, what material they should be made from, how we can take into account whole-life value and how we should organise our design processes to take advantage. ACORN will answer all of these questions.”

Dr Paul Shepherd, Principal Investigator and Senior Lecturer in the University of Bath’s Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, said: “ACORN is tackling the UK government’s construction 2025 targets head-on. By automating construction, moving it off-site, and developing a culture of using just enough material, and no more, the project will lower costs, reduce delivery times and dramatically reduce carbon emissions.”

ACORN is supported by 12 project partners: AECOM Ltd (UK); AKT II; Arup Group Ltd; Building Research Establishment Ltd; Buro Happold; Byrne Bros; Cambridge CSIC; Foster and Partners; Laing O’Rourke Ltd; McKinsey and Company UK; OPS Structural Engineering and Tonkin Liu.

To ensure the ideas of ACORN are taken up by industry, the partners will share their practical knowledge of the latest industry trends and will provide case studies on which to benchmark the research.

SOURCE: Cambridge Network

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says countries intending to retain nuclear power as an option in their clean-energy transitions should support innovative new reactor designs with lower capital costs and shorter lead times, such as small modular reactors (SMRs).
The recommendation is made in a newly released report, titled ‘Nuclear Power in a Clean Energy System’, released this week during the tenth Clean Energy Ministerial in Vancouver, Canada.
The report makes the case for sustaining nuclear, which currently accounts for 10% of global electricity generation, as an option to help meet global climate targets.
The report asserts that, while a clean-energy transition with less nuclear power is possible, a substantial rise in investment in other forms of power generation and electricity networks would be required.
The IEA calculates that the electricity sector in advanced economies would have to invest an additional $1.6-trillion between 2018 and 2040.
Securing investment in new nuclear plants would require a “more intrusive” policy intervention, however, particularly in light of the high cost of projects and unfavourable recent experiences.
The report highlights the long delays in completing advanced reactor projects in Finland, France and the US.
“They have turned out to cost far more than originally expected and dampened investor interest in new projects.”
The main obstacles to new nuclear investments are listed as including: the sheer scale of investment and long lead times; the risk of construction problems, delays and cost overruns; and the possibility of future changes in policy or the electricity system itself.
Interest is rising, therefore, in advanced nuclear technologies that suit private investment such as SMRs.
“There is a case for governments to promote it through funding for research and development, public-private partnerships for venture capital and early deployment grants.”
Standardisation of reactor designs will be crucial, however, to benefit from economies of scale in the manufacturing of SMRs.
South Africa’s Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) programme was officially closed in 2010, owing to funding constraints and an inability to attract an investment partner.
The intellectual property was retained by the PBMR Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eskom, which subsequently developed a conceptual outline for converting the PBMR into an Advanced High Temperature Reactor.
Eskom is facing serious financial constraints and is unlikely to be in a position to invest in nuclear research and development.
South Africa’s yet-to-be-concluded Integrated Resource Plan includes an assumption that the life of the 1 800 MW Koeberg nuclear power station, in the Western Cape, will be extended by 20 years to 2044.
The draft IRP, currently the subject of consultation at the National Economic Development and Labour Council, does not preclude the development of new nuclear capacity, but states that such capacity would by added at a “scale and pace that will not have a negative impact on the economy”.
No new nuclear capacity is envisaged for the period to 2030, representing a marked deviation from the current outdated IRP, which controversially catered for the introduction of 9 600 MW of new nuclear capacity between 2023 and 2030.

SOURCE: Engineering News