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Three-liter house is below calculated consumption |
11/02 |
Three-liter house is below calculated consumption
Heating systems consume approximately one third of all energy in Germany. With this amount, it is worth looking for potential savings in order to go easy on the purse and the environment. BASF is taking the lead and has modernized an old building into the three-liter house. And the house has proven its worth, as Professor Dr. Heinrich from Kaiserslautern University attests: "In the first winter period, the modernized apartment house consumed only 2.5 liters of heating oil (per year and per square meter) and emitted 80 percent less CO2 than before the renovation." An average old, unrenovated house needs approximately 20 liters to heat it. The advantage for the tenant is obvious: As the result of the lower consumption, the heating costs for a 100 square meter flat drop from 700 euros to 100 euros a year.
The innovative house is an apartment block with nine living units covering 700 square meters. It is part of the Brunck district that has been renovated by BASF, an area of Ludwigshafen dating back to the thirties and immediately adjacent to the company site, which formerly provided 850 living units. The new town planning concept comprises both the modernization of some of the old buildings and the demolition and reconstruction of dwellings. In addition, BASF is establishing new green spaces and enhancing the living environment with its own traffic-calming concept. Thus, the quality of life in the whole Brunck district is being sustainably improved.
In the modernized living units of this BASF company estate, the heating requirement is already lower than seven liters. Together with the new buildings that are planned, the energy consumption and CO2 emissions for the whole residential area will be reduced by 80 percent.
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Packaged with all-round heat insulation
At first sight a perfectly normal house, the three-liter house is, however, full of technical refinements and innovative ideas. The energy savings and the associated reduction in the emission of CO2 is being primarily achieved by special heat insulation. Beside the good insulation, importance has been attached to avoiding what are known as thermal bridges whereby more heat escapes to the outside via building elements. Professor Heinrich also states: "Modern energy-conserving houses like the three-liter house are constructed according to the philosophy of the airtight external envelope." Even when there is a heavy frost, the heat stays in the house.
The exterior facade of the old house was insulated with 20-centimeter thick Neopor® boards; the ceiling of the basement and the roof were also insulated with this new product. Compared with conventional insulating materials, Neopor® has a much better thermal insulation capacity. Like the BASF classic Styropor®, the product is based on polystyrene, but also contains minute infrared reflectors that reflect the radiated heat. This means the same thermal performance is achieved by the use of considerably lower amounts of raw materials or by an insulating material with a 15 to 20 percent reduced thickness. According to Professor Heinrich, the use of Neopor® for the external envelope is the most important energy conservation measure in the three-liter house – both with reference to the benefit for the person commissioning the house and from the ecological angle, as well as in the production of the material. Finally, although approximately ten liters of petroleum are required to produce Neopor® boards (an area of one square meter and twenty centimeters thick); 1,200 liters of heating oil would be saved in 50 years.
The windows in the three-liter house are triple-glazed and have a U value of 0.8 W/m2K. The Vinidur® plastic frames from BASF are equipped with a polyurethane insulating core that offers optimal insulation. Additional thermal protection is provided by the inert gas filling between the panes. For comparison: Approximately seven times the amount of heat escapes through a single-glazed window.
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A very pleasant climate in the home
A ventilation unit provides fresh air. It sucks the spent air from the kitchen and bathroom and feeds it to a heat exchanger. This transfers up to 85 percent of the heat to the fresh air, which then flows filtered and at a pleasant temperature into the lounge and bedroom. Sabine Glaser, tenant in the three-liter house, enthuses: "When we had cooked fish in our old flat, the smell often hung around for one or two days in our kitchen. Thanks to the ventilation equipment, the smell is now outside in one or two hours." Opening a window occasionally for rapid ventilation is of course allowed, although there is uncontrolled heat loss in the process. "Those living in the three-liter house do not need to change their style of living, but they do benefit from the very favorable rent, which includes the heating costs", says Dr. Wolfgang Schubert from BASF's housing company LUWOGE, that completed the apartment block in April 2001. The tenants feel comfortable in the three-liter house, confirms a tenant survey carried out by Kaiserslautern University: "The tenants get on well with the modern heating and ventilation arrangements", says Heinrich.
Pleasant temperatures in spite of the summer's heat? BASF has developed a new type of internal render that contains ten to 15 percent of latent heat storers in the form of microscopic wax particles. There are 750 to 1,500 grams of wax per square meter. The thermal capacity of two centimeters of this render corresponds to that of a 20-centimeter thick cavity-brick wall. If it gets hot outside, the melting of the wax consumes heat, without the temperature in the house rising. In order for the wax to be incorporated in concrete or render, BASF's research scientists "packaged" it in microcapsules.
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120 million data measured per year
In order to see that the three-liter house provides full living comfort, Professor Heinrich monitors the building and its occupants throughout the year with his measuring program. For comfort, the temperature should be between 18 and 24 degrees centigrade and the humidity between 40 and 60 percent. "The CO2 content should not be too high either, otherwise people get headaches", says Heinrich. More than 150 measuring sensors are distributed in the house. They register room and wall temperatures, humidity, and more. And the results of the first winter show: The occupants had felt pleasantly warm with an average temperature of 22 degrees in the house – in spite of saving energy. The house is supplied with heat and electricity for example by an oxide ceramic high-temperature fuel cell, which uses natural gas as the energy source. This fuel cell supplies one kilowatt of electric and 2.5 kilowatts of thermal power and is being tested under real conditions in this apartment house and is being monitored in connection with a scientific study with Bingen University. Using this efficient energy converter produces very low levels of air pollutants, as it is mainly water that is formed as the reaction product.
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The prospects: Energy conservation has a future
With BASF's innovative building materials, the apartment block in Ludwigshafen that has been renovated into the three-liter house shows that it can in fact be realized just like the three-liter car, and can serve as a visionary target for old buildings. The new German Energy Conservation Regulation (in force since February 01, 2002), which elevates the seven-liter house to the standard for new buildings, shows that energy conservation does have a future. Experts estimate that, of the 34 million dwellings in Germany, approximately 24 million urgently need renovation as regards thermal insulation. Here there is a major market in the renovation of old buildings with a building volume of approximately 400 billion euros in Germany.Welcome acknowledgement: BASF's prize-winning house
The three-liter house and the insulating material Neopor® received BASF's Innovation Award in May 2001. In November 2001, with the "House of the Future", BASF won the Innovation Prize Real Estate 2001, Category Development and Building, of the trade journal IMMOBILIEN MANAGER and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Information for editors:
You will find more information on the three-liter house under www.3lh.de and in the RheinNeckarWeb, the regional Internet portal of BASF Aktiengesellschaft, under http://www.rheinneckarweb.de/basf/erleben/3literhaus/. An interactive model explains the innovations from latent heat storer to fuel cell. Further information on the eco-efficiency analysis of Neopor® may be found under: /de/sustainability/oekoeffizienz/oea_projekte/waermedaemmung.htm.
Jacqueline Engesser
Tel.: +49 621 60-95136
Fax: +49 621 60-92933
email: jacqueline.engesser@basf-ag.de
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