The smell of the Black Forest

This week the show has really started. Eight strong Germans have arrived from Oberharmersbach, bringing with them truckloads full of fresh spruce panels and beams from the Black Forest. Assembly is fast and accurate. So far so good.

 

Anticipating climate change

When you design a ventilation system for an office that should last many decades, what assumption do you make for atmospheric CO2 ?

The ventilation system in our new office will be the only source of fresh air for its 50-140 occupants (windows can be opened, but there will be no need to do so). Sizing and designing that ventilation system is critical if you want to make sure the air quality inside is top notch. Research has shown that a CO2 concentration of 800ppm (parts per million) is the maximum value of CO2 to strive for in an office. 


Obviously CO2 is not the only pollutant in the air, but it is much easier to measure than other values and serves as a good indicator of air quality in general. So our ventilation system will measure CO2 levels (plus relative humidity, temperature and pressure) in all rooms and increase and decrease air volume to ensure the concentration stays between 600 and 800ppm. In order to do that it will pull out "dirty" air, send it over a big rotary heat exchanger (which recovers heat and moisture) and replace it with the same quantity of fresh air.

When you decide how big the ventilation system should be to keep CO2 inside below 800ppm, you need to know how much CO2 is in the fresh air outside, or you don't know how much "refreshing" capacity you are installing.

And this is where it gets quite interesting... Nearly all building guidelines prescribe a concentration of 350ppm to be used for atmospheric CO2. Which was the atmospheric CO2 concentration in the 1990's....

But why were we building an ultra sustainable Energy Plus Office again ? Right, because atmospheric CO2 is rising way too fast, causing climate change and threatening the survival of our species on this planet. In fact, in my lifetime it has risen from 320ppm to 400ppm, the highest value in over 800.000 years.

Now, if we assume 350ppm for atmospheric CO2 as prescribed, this means that the outside air has more "refreshing" potential because it can absorb more CO2 from our office before it needs to be replaced. But since atmospheric CO2 has already reached 400ppm, we will in fact need more air volume for the same amount of CO2 absorption. 

If you think about it, all buildings that have been designed based on 350ppm in the last 20 years either have to start accepting higher and higher internal CO2 levels, which is not ideal for health and productivity, or open their windows more, which is very bad for energy efficiency.

So what did we decide? Despite the fact that we hope the world will radically change course over the next few years to limit its CO2 emissions, we want to make sure the office stays healthy and efficient, so we designed our ventilation system for an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 450ppm, which is what is expected in about 20 years from now in the "business as usual" scenario.

I sure hope that in 20 years time we can look back and conclude that the human species was clever enough to avert disaster by switching quickly from coal, oil and gas to renewable fuels and by stopping deforestation. The technology is already available and the economy will be much better off.

In that case we can then all be very happy that we oversized our ventilation system and that we will never need to run it at full capacity:-)

Smart Construction : Common Sense

During the preparations for our new office we have not only tried to be smart in the final design but also smart in how we were going to build it.

A few years ago, when we built our zero-energy-home I noticed how much time, materials, energy and money are wasted in the traditional construction process. Anytime you build a one-off design, using project specific details and materials, assembled by a team of people that have never worked together before and who are supposed to deliver top quality while working outside in wind and rain, you can expect some problems. 

In our own business, when we build machines, we do not make money on the first unit of a new design and usually not even on the second and third. And that is despite our best efforts to avoid problems in the design and to find them during prototyping. We only start making money once we have ironed out all design problems, replaced some components and fine-tuned our purchasing and manufacturing process. By contrast in the construction busines many companies never get a chance to apply the lessons learned.

EXPERIENCE COUNTS

So, for our new office I decided that some things needed to change. First of all we started the process with the same design group, consisting of Rob Wolfs (architect), Ron Hochstenbach (technical consultant), Jos Wagemans (project manager) and myself. The team was enlarged with Robert de Boergraaf for all consultancy and design work on heating, ventilation etc.

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION

Second we set up a program of requirements which included not only the goals "energy-plus-office" and "cradle-to-cradle" but also "industrial production". With this we dictated that we want the construction to be based on a detailed design in 3D and on pre-fabrication of parts in a controlled factory environment, ready for fast assembly on site.

FULL CONTROL

And third, I decided to build without a main contractor. Instead we build under the name of our own company, directly enlisting subcontractors. Jos Wagemans was recruited to project-manage the process on a full-time basis. Having a owner's representative as project manager on site 100% of the time is essential for quality and cost control.

PLANNING

In working with subcontractors we made sure that the boundaries of their work were very clear and that we allowed separate time slots for each to minimise interference. For example, once the concrete basement (below) was ready, the subcontractor cleaned everything up. 

Today they handed the site back over to us for transfer to the massive-wood subcontractor from Germany for the next 8 weeks. The first truck with wooden panels from the Schwarzwald arrived today in time for assembly next week.

Only when the massive wood subcontractor wood is gone will we provide access to subcontractors for roofing, façades and windows. And only when the building is completely closed will we provide access for installation of heating, ducting, cabling, etc. The goal is to make sure that every major subcontractor can do his job without interference from others. Obviously it was essential to take that goal into account when designing and planning the building.

Smart Construction is Common Sense.

Basement nears completion

Our Cradle to Cradle concrete basement is nearing completion. The main task left now is to pour the concrete bases with bolts under the wooden supports for the first floor which will arrive middle of May. Nice challenge to make sure these are accurate within 5mm. We are still on time and within budget.

Because of our planned Breeam "5 star/outstanding" certification we have published our goals and design details in a Case Study which can be used by other designers and builders so they can build upon the lessons learned in this project. The common goal is to make sure that as many offices as possible become ultra-sustainable.

Concrete floor still drying as outer skins of basement are already in position 

Meanwhile at Firma Rombach/NurHolz in Southern Germany's Schwarzwald

Massive Wood

 

Our biggest design decision was no doubt the decision to build the whole office out of  Massive Wood. Very few multi-story offices in Europe have been built out of Massive Wood so far and none yet in the Netherlands.

Massive Wood in this case means something entirely different from using wood for some of the structures and façades, as is commonplace in many buildings. No, here the entire structure is made of massive wood, with no use of steel or concrete (except for the basement floor and walls). The walls and floors will be built up of 26-36cm massive wood panels, consisting of multiple cross-layers of glue-free solid FSC fir wood, sustainably harvested in South Western Germany.

The decision to go for massive wood was triggered by our quest to find a material for construction that would not only answer all of our technical requirements to achieve high energy goals (such as thermal mass, insulation, airtightness) but also score very high in sustainability and health.

From a sustainability perspective, there is no better building material than wood and it is very unlikely that anything better can ever be developed. Which other material absorbs so much CO2 during its growth and then provides such good thermal mass and insulation values during its lifetime ?

Using wood may sound unsustainable to some. We need as many trees as possible to absorb CO2 right ? Correct! But a sustainably managed (FSC or PEFC) forest absorbs more CO2 than a wild one, as the removal of grown-up trees creates space in the forest for fast-growing young ones. So in fact wood from sustainable forests easily outperforms any

After visiting multiple suppliers and references in Austria and Germany we eventually selected "NurHolz" from Rombach in Germany's Schwarzwald to supply pre-fab floor- and wall- panels which can be quickly assembled on site in May. Trucking all of these panels to Haelen of course takes a toll on our project's CO2 balance, but that is easily compensated by the big CO2 savings that the material itself provides when compared to concrete.

Is massive wood more expensive ? Yes, in the short run it is. But we are very optimistic about recovering the extra investment because there is no healthier environment to work in. No glue, no paint, no cold radiation from walls or floors, perfect comfort. If there is one building in which all risks of "sick building syndrome" have been tackled, this is it.

We will all have to switch our "take-make-waste" linear economy into a circular economy in which all materials are either re-used or given back to nature. If we don't, there simply won't be enough materials around for all of us. By building our office out of one of nature's best products we make another small step in preparing our company for the circular economy of tomorrow.

(Virtual) Reality

Since we want to build as sustainably as possible, we decided to use the BREEAM certification system for definition and verification of our goals. BREEAM stands for Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method. It is an international certification system for "green" buildings that originates in the UK. Over 250.000 buildings have already been certified worldwide. The independent professional assessors award 1 to 5 stars based on measured performance in the categories Materials, Energy, Health, Ecology, Transport,  Pollution, Waste, Water and Management.

The main reason we decided in favour of BREEAM is that it measures the actual measured performance of the building (reality), as opposed to scoring a building on the basis of its design only (virtual reality). As machinery manufacturer we know how essential it is to judge something by its actual performance. We continuously fine-tune our dryer and cooler design models based on measured feedback from the field. Without such a feedback loop there is no real progress.

Another big plus of BREEAM is that it not only judges environmental aspects but also health and well-being of users of the building. Staying healthy and working in a comfortable building is a prerequisite for employees to be able to contribute to the goals of People, Planet and Profit. Breeam does that by setting strict limits on air quality, noise levels, building materials etc.

To do this properly you need to completely integrate the BREEAM guidelines (hundreds of pages) into the design process from day 1. We set ourselves goals for each of the above criteria that would allow us to achieve the highest possible score under BREEAM: 5 stars/Outstanding. Then we optimised every design decision to take those goals into account. 

This way BREEAM forces you to take better decisions and to take a real long term perspective. For example, by using financial Life Cycle Analysis it shows you how only a 0,1% reduction in employee sickness during 20 years can justify a big extra investment in top quality air systems to avoid "sick building syndrome". Or how intensive cooperation with the building's users and neighbours in the early design stages leads to a better design and a smoother approval process.

Obviously the biggest disadvantage of such a certification system is the cost. It easily adds the same amount of money to your budget as covering a big part of the roof with solar panels :-) But as a percentage of total construction cost it is less than 1%. That additional investment is easily recovered in extra quality of the building. And of course in knowing that all the extra effort leads to a more healthy and sustainable building, not only in "virtual reality" but also in "reality".

Ambitious Goals

After several years of quick growth, we have reached the limits of our more than 35 year old office (pictured above just behind the parked cars). With 30 office staff, desks are too close together, air conditioning systems are not up to their job any more and toilet facilities are outdated, with insufficient capacity.

So, confident in the future growth of our company we decided to build a new office of roughly double the size of the old one: 2400 m2 for 50 office staff and canteen/washrooms for 140. We elected not to rebuild in the same location because space there is too limited and the transition would interfere with our daily operations. Luckily we have another plot of land at the back of our workshop that is big enough (pictured above on the left of the workshop).

Following the successful construction of our Zero Energy House in 2011/2012, for the new office we decided to take this concept one step further. This time we will build an office that generates more energy than it consumes on an annual basis (Energy Plus Office) and construct it completely from sustainable building materials, using the Cradle to Cradle principles. And to make sure that all health- and environmental goals are explicitly clear and measurable we decided to have the whole office certified under BREEAM rules, aiming for the highest score: "Outstanding / 5 stars".

Why take it this far ? First and foremost because it makes good business sense for any company to be isolated as much as possible from future fluctuations in fossil fuel energy prices and to take the best possible care of its staff. The estimated additional investment to achieve that will be recovered within 10 years, which is a very good investment for assets that will last many decades.

Secondly, manufacturing companies in Western Europe can only thrive through continuous innovation and improvement. Sustainability is both a great driver for innovation and a big attraction for the best employees. They want to be part of a team that uses their skills and energy to innovate and add value to a bigger cause than just making money. The environment in which they work is an important catalyst for that innovation and teamwork.

And finally,  our company's strategy is focussed on sustainability, both our own and that of our customers. With our counterflow drying and cooling technology we can make a small but meaningful contribution to providing the growing world population with enough food in a sustainable way.

For a company's success, Return on Financial Capital is no longer enough. It must also generate Returns on Social and Natural Capital. The new office should reflect those goals for all stakeholders to see.