retrofitting

Grilningen primary school near Zurich, Switzerland, was built 20 years ago, and energy consumption, in particular for heating and lighting, was unnecessarily high. An unconventional retrofitting procedure involving new chip-wood furnace, interior insulation, mass-coupled ventilation and controlled artificial lighting was adopted. The work was carried out without interruption of normal school operation. The results are very promising and measurements indicate a drop in heat consumption of 70% with standards of comfort raised considerably.

The Jandel school in southern Sweden was thoroughly retrofitted in 1994-95. Both lighting and ventilation systems have been designed for high energy efficiency. New windows with excellent insulating performance have been installed. A before and after comparison shows that the energy required for heating has been reduced from about 210 k Wh/m2 to about 94 k Whlm2 a year, i.e. a reduction of about 55%. Electricity for building services systems has decreased by about 20%, despite the fact that considerably more computers are used in the school today than prior to rebuilding.

Many post-war residential buildings in the Netherlands have collective heating systems with poor energy efficiency. Also ventilation and DHW systems usually do not comply with current requirements. In Heerlen, the Netherlands, a demonstration was carried out in the framework of the EC-THERMIE programme in a residential building where the collective heating, DHW and ventilation systems are replaced by individual multi-functional appliances. These appliances are a recent development in the Netherlands, integrating different service functions.

In ABN 11, "Dynamic Buffer Zone" introduced the topic of the dynamic buffer zone system. This article provides the results of an actual side by side test during an historical building renovation.