Watches, light bulbs, TVs, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, mattresses, bells and door locks. This is not a complete list of product categories that have been enriched in recent years with various solutions collectively referred to as “smart”. Of course, we could also add houses or, more broadly, real estate to this list. But what is a truly smart home?
Is it about curtains opening and closing automatically, or maybe not being needed at all to maintain thermal comfort? Budizol engineers have developed a number of solutions aimed at the latter goal. They collectively called them Energy³.
Reality: a bit gray, a bit hybrid
The rising and uncertain prices of energy carriers and ecological trends are encouraging more and more people to consider zero-energy construction or as close to it as possible. How can such results be achieved? For example, by using the natural properties of popular materials: concrete and wood.
Concrete has a high thermal capacity, which can be further increased, for example, by embedding phase-change materials in it. It can also be used more effectively by using wall heating or ceiling instead of floor or standard radiators. Concrete is also commonly associated with solidity, so it is suitable as a basic construction material with great potential for commercial success.
Wood, on the other hand, is a great thermal insulator. This predisposes it to be the basic building material for external walls. If the whole thing is additionally prefabricated, we shorten the construction time and the related inconveniences and pollution. In this way, both houses (single-family detached, semi-detached, terraced, city villas) and larger buildings (multi-family, office, hotel, public utility) can be built.
Solution: integrated and comprehensive
Of course, walls are just one element. To achieve the best results, it is necessary to take care of three areas. These are:
- very good thermal insulation of all external partitions (foundations, foundations, walls and roof slopes)
2. equipped with ventilation with heat recovery
3. use of passive energy: solar, air, water, rocks and earth
Hence Energy³ – to the third power in terms of solutions and in terms of volume, the heating and cooling of which absorbs a huge amount of energy. What effects can be expected thanks to the use of these solutions? Thermal comfort inside, clean environment outside and low utility bills on the account.
And where did the idea come from in Budizol? Of course, it germinated over years of work as a general contractor and observing the ailments of traditional constructions. A visit to the Passive House Institute in Darmstadt and a model passive house built by the Passive Building Center of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Poznań University of Technology helped to specify the plan.
The path to implementation: through a factory
In order to implement the planned activities, it was necessary to build a new factory. This is how a relatively small plant was built on Toruńska Street in Włocławek, opposite the huge ANWIL S.A. plants: three bays with total dimensions of 18×150 meters. However, its strength lies not in its size – recently expanded by additional bays – but in its flexibility and range of possibilities, including the ability to produce prestressed elements.
When planning the factory equipment, attention was paid to a whole range of issues, the discussion of which goes far beyond the scope of this entry. We will mention only one issue that well reflects the care for the environment and costs: thanks to a specialist machine, reinforcements are made of ribbed steel imported in the form of rolled coils, not straight bars. This significantly reduces the amount of waste.
According to the plan, buildings made using Energia³ technology include single-family houses (e.g. budiHOME), apartment buildings (e.g. Sprzeczna 4) and office buildings (e.g. Tertio Ponte). All of them are manufactured in a factory, transported to the construction site on special trailers and assembled “from wheels”. And later, for example, they do not require radiators in common areas.
