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Have building-size legos finally arrived?
The Institute for Civil Engineering and Environment (INCEEN) at the University of Luxembourg have signed a "memorandum of understanding" with the Suisse Federal Laboratories of Materials Science and Technology (Empa) of the domain of ETH Zürich to collaborate on research on energy efficiency in the construction sector.
As the building sector is generating a large amount of CO2 emissions, resource consumption and waste production, new eco-construction approaches are needed. Therefore, the first collaboration project entitled "Eco-Construction for Sustainable Development" (ECON4SD) will focus on the development of novel components and design models for resource and energy efficient buildings based on the construction materials concrete, steel and timber.
ECON4SD will bring together researchers from different civil engineering fields and architecture at the University of Luxembourg and the Empa Zürich, as well as from universities abroad in cooperation with partners from industry and consultancies in Luxembourg. One vision of the project is to develop building components that can be re-used after a building has reached the end of its life cycle and is disassembled. "The ECON4SD aims to turn buildings into materials and components banks and will allow producers of structural elements to come to a different business model. That would consist in loaning materials or components to customers and take them back after use in a particular building, in order to resell them directly, recondition or recycle them," commented professor Danièle Waldmann of the University of Luxembourg. "Thereby, the project paves the way for a future CE material or component passport comparable to the already existing energy passport."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday November 03 2017, @06:52PM (5 children)
Who exactly wants to live in a house with any parts from a house that had reached the end of its useful life and had to be torn down?
That would usually be 100 years after the donor house was originally built. Even the chalk in the sheet rock has probably become polluted by then.
The wood (if any) is probably full of mold. No, I don't think I want a reconditioned 100 year old bathroom, thank you very much.
Also, who says we will be building the with the same materials in 100 years? These guys will probably have to redesign the entire house with an eye toward recycling and the benefit of that won't be seen for 100 years. With no guarantees of course.
The teardown of a modern single family dwelling results in:
- scrap wood - cut to unusable lengths and full of nails
- busted up sheet rock, also full of nails (this could be sent back to be the factory for recycling, but its all land filled these days)
- Misc copper plumbing, almost all of it recycled already.
- Wire - Ditto
- Glass - crushed in the process of land-filling
Stone counters, very occasionally recycled (large slabs only) the rest usually land filled.
Summary: metal-recycled occasionally
Just about everything else is just trashed.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday November 03 2017, @07:04PM (2 children)
Yeah, the last thing I want in a modern house is a bathroom from 1950. Those things were awful. And the toilets from back then wasted an incredible amount of water too, and the sink faucets leaked, plus everything was butt-ugly back then.
And anything made of copper is definitely not trashed these days; it's too valuable.
Drywall gypsum could maybe be recycled, but would the fuel/energy needed to capture it and transport it for recycling, then process it for recycling (after getting rid of the moldy stuff) be less than that used for just using fresh gypsum from mines?
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Friday November 03 2017, @07:18PM
Those new toilets are awful. They call them low flush. They're not low flush. The first flush, OK, it's less water. But you have to flush them two, three times. Flush, flush, flush! You do 2, 3 flushes and you're lucky if it isn't still a DISGUSTING mess in there. It's a lot of water, folks. Give me the good old toilets from when America was great! #MAGA 🇺🇸
(Score: 3, Interesting) by choose another one on Saturday November 04 2017, @11:24AM
1950s may have been awful, but my house has an original Victorian (I think) water closet, high flush, lead-lined wooden cistern, lead piping (who cares, you're not drinking it) and all.
It all still works, hasn't needed any maintenance for the 20yrs I've been here (the more modern toilets in the house have needed new float valves, floats etc.), it doesn't leak, and nothing but nothing in that bowl is still there after the first flush (where other toilets often take two, three or more). Yeah, it probably uses a few gallons of water but you only need to do it once, ever. The Victorians built stuff to last, and it does (like the rest of the house).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @07:57PM
Wood is perfectly find to reuse, especially if it doesn't have a bunch of holes in it from nails/screws. Even then there are certain permanent fillers you can use which are 'as strong or stronger' than the original wood, ensuring that the renailed boards are just as good as new, assuming no damage.
Wood lasts a long time if not damaged by the elements or neglect, and even in many condemned houses most of the structural materials would still be good. Usually what makes a place uninhabitable is water damage, mold, or unrepaired structural damage at a point in the house where the weight distribution could cause a catastrophic collapse. Most of the reason for materials going to the dump is simple labor cost. Nobody wants to take the time to pull the nails out of sheetrock and then wall beams to recover the materials used in a house. It is cheaper to just bulldoze the whole place. I heard of such happening with a 100 year old warehouse out near where the big California fire just happened. The building in question was ALL REDWOOD. The owner of the building chose to have it demolished rather than having it disassembled so that the redwood could be recovered and resold, despite dozens of people willing to pay to get it, and the beam sizes being IMPOSSIBLE to find today thanks to over lumbering of old growth redwoods leading to the current conservation restrictions on them today.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday November 04 2017, @11:53AM
Well, must be a market for it somewhere because round here 100+yr old reclaimed stone flooring goes for £100+ per sq yd, which is a _lot_ more than modern floor tiles. Means my kitchen floor is worth a few grand on its own. Haven't looked at prices for the stone in the walls, but I reckon a similar premium over modern materials, ditto the original 11inch wide pine floorboards (and the 8+in deep joists), which are still doing fine thanks.
But then I ain't tearing the house down any time soon, it's stood for over 150yrs and most likely it'll still be standing long after I've gone. Build stuff properly in the first place and there is no need to worry about recycling.