Building retrofitting shouldn’t be a hassle, 4RinEU tells you why

Experienced buildings owners know very well that building refurbishment is a risky business. However, doing nothing with your buildings has serious risks. So where to start? Prefabrication is a reliable and affordable solution to make your buildings live longer in healthier conditions.

The booklet “Renovate deep and renovate fast“ provides valuable information on the risks associated with deep energy renovation and explains how to ensure a smooth renovation process. The booklet is based on the experience of the EU-funded project 4RinEU and summarises the lessons learned from three real case studies. This publication is intended for building owners and managers, but it may also be useful to building surveyors, designers, and contractors.

Download the booklet

Have fun with 4RinEU cookbook and learn about the most innovative solutions to make your home more efficient and comfortable 

Renovating buildings can boost their value and add comfort to the life of the residents. Over the past five years, the EU-funded project 4RinEU developed and tested cutting-edge renovation packages to make refurbishments cheaper and easier. 

The cookbook explains 4RinEU concept in six recipes where energy efficiency technologies are the main ingredients. The booklet is designed for students, but also for curious people willing to learn how deep renovation can affect their homes and their lives in an easy-to-understand language, free from technical jargon.  

Download 4RinEU cookbook and find the right solution for your taste and your budget! The cookbook is available in four languages (English, Italian, Spanish, and German).

Discover 4RinEU recipes to renovate your home: 

Download 4RinEU cookbook in English 

Scarica il ricettario di 4RinEU in italiano 

Descargar el libro de recetas de 4RinEU en español 

4RinEU Kochbuch in deutscher Sprache herunterladen 

The building sector, when including both construction and operation, is responsible for a significant share of resources and energy consumption and CO₂ emissions worldwide. The 2020 Building Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction speaks about global shares of 35% and 38% of the final energy and the emissions, respectively, for the building sector in 2019. Around 35% of the EU’s buildings are over 50 years old, and by improving their energy efficiency, the total EU energy consumption could be reduced by 5-6% and CO₂ emissions lowered by about 5%.

[…] One of the options to accelerate the renovation rate looks at developing a deep retrofit approach based on modular and industrialised solutions. In this context, the use of a prefabricated multifunctional façade represents a potentially convenient solution to allow effective and multi-criteria renovation of existing buildings, addressing both the envelope and the building systems, as well as structural rehabilitation. Prefabricated modular solutions guarantee quick installation of pre-optimised technological systems and very limited impact on building occupants.

[…] The European Union has funded and continues to finance several research and innovation projects to tackle the immense issue of energy inefficiency in the building sector, by exploiting the modular and industrialised approach. After around ten years of projects, the challenges now relate to boosting the market uptake of solutions, increasing the stakeholders’ s acceptance towards the creation of a smooth and robust value-chain, and exploiting the benefits of the modular-industrialised approach for the decarbonisation of the building stock, taking into consideration the whole life cycle.

Read the full article on BuildUP

Online workshop | 25th of June from 9:00 to 11:00

4RinEu will contribute to this year’s WSED European Energy Efficiency Conference with an online workshop dedicated to professionals in the renovation industry.

During the workshop, participants will have the chance to test 4RinEU rating tool, developed to guide users early in their decision process with a focus on improving the energy-efficiency potential and reducing the impact of the renovation project.

Title of the workshop: Deep renovation of residential buildings made easy

Chairperson: Roberto Lollini, Institute for Renewable Energy, Eurac Research – Italy

Agenda:

1. 4RinEU approach to building renovation (15 minutes)
   Roberto Lollini, Institute for Renewable Energy, Eurac Research – Italy
2. Innovative set of solutions for deep energy renovation of buildings (30 minutes)
   Riccardo Pinotti, Institute for Renewable Energy, Eurac Research – Italy
3. Supporting decision-making in deep renovation projects: 4RinEU rating tool (15 minutes)
   Adrian Werner, SINTEF – Norway
4. Guided demo of 4RinEU rating tool based on real time feedback from the audience (30 minutes)
   Adrian Werner, SINTEF – Norway
5. Open Q&A session and feedback for further development of the tool (15 minutes)
6. Implementation in real environment

• • 4RinEU demo case in Norway (15 minutes)
    Kari Thunshelle, SINTEF – Norway
  • 4RinEU demo case in the Netherlands (15 minutes)
    Chiel Boonstra, Trecodome – The Netherlands

Participation to the innovation workshops is free upon registration. Check the programme and register now!

Cover photo created by freepik – www.freepik.com

A two-day free online course for planners and manufacturing companies organised by Gumpp & Maier – 20 and 21 May 2021

Prefabricated timber-framed elements offer a cost-effective solution to renovate buildings and reduce energy consumption. Within the 4RinEU project, Gumpp & Maier GmbH (Germany) worked together with partners from research and practice like Eurac Research (Italy), Sintef (Norway) and Aderma Locatelli (Italy) to renovate three demo cases and assess this method on buildings with different characteristics and in different climate zones.

The façade modules with integrated service components were applied to the pre-existing façades to create a second shell. The planning, execution and assembly of the elements followed a digital standardised workflow that allows to find the most suitable solutions depending on the building’s needs.

In this training course for planners, manufacturing companies and other interested parties in the construction value chain, Gumpp & Maier GmbH will present the results of the 4RinEU project and will share the knowledge gained in many years of experience in the field of building renovation with prefabricated timber construction elements.

The two-day online training will provide you with the basics to be able to plan or execute this renovation method yourself.

The first part of the training deals in particular with the technical background, the development within the framework of 4RinEU and the planning of the elements. There will be interactive tasks that are worked on together in order to internalise the planning of prefabricated timber-frame elements for building renovation.

The second part deals with the practical implementation of building renovation from prefabrication and transport to assembly and commissioning. The explanations are practically illustrated by demo projects, including those from the 4RinEU project.

The course material and a recording of the webinars will be provided to participants after the sessions.

Download the agenda

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Day and time: May 20^th, 2021 from 13:30 to 16:00 and May 21^st, 2021 from 9:30 to 12:00

The course is free of charge upon registration. To register, please write an email to info@gumpp-maier.de by the 18^th of May 2021. Attendance is limited to 20 participants.

Please note: The course will be held entirely in German. Questions can also be asked and answered in English if needed.

For further information, please contact:
Maximilian Schlehlein, Gumpp & Maier GmbH, Structural Design, Research & Development
email: m.schlehlein@gumpp-maier.de
Tel: +49 8272 9985 287
www.gumpp-maier.de

As European buildings are responsible for 36% of CO2 emissions, the subject of deep renovation of buildings has become central in its role for making Europe climate neutral by 2050. Henceforth, there is a compelling need for a new set of skills to deep renovation projects. 4RinEU MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) offers to new professionals in the construction sector a comprehensive set of lessons and training materials to develop such skills.

The course introduces the basics of deep renovation in residential buildings, though some modules are applicable to any kind of building. The student will be able to get a grasp of energy efficiency in buildings, and how to achieve a deep renovation project based on passive and active technologies.

4RinEU course is intended to teach and form a new generation of skilled practitioners of the deep area of sustainable built environment. It welcomes students of any built environment discipline and overall, any professionals in the built environment (designers, engineers, architects, researchers, developers, contractors, facility managers).

The effort also included the framing within the European multilingual classification of Skills, Competences and Occupations (ESCO) as well as Universal Design for Learning principles.

The course is structured in 6 weeks:

• Week 1 – Towards 2050 Carbon Neutrality: the role of energy efficiency in buildings
• Week 2 – Building envelope: prefabricated multifunctional façade
• Week 3 – Building performance calculation and data analysis: definition, procedure, data flow and results representation and analysis
• Week 4 – Deep renovation process: supporting decision
• Week 5 – Integration of renewables: early design methodology for renewables
• Week 6 – Lessons learnt from case studies

Go to 4RinEU Massive Open Online Course

One of the goals of 4RinEU project is to develop a cost-effective energy audit protocol to support the deep renovation process of residential buildings. In fact, in the residential sector, building owners usually prefer to invest higher resources on new technical systems and components rather than on energy audits and renovation design.

The renovation decision-making process is mainly driven by other factors than energy audit: the subsidies established for a particular technology, the minimum performance requirements to be achieved and the technology commercial advertisement with low detailed information.
The cost effectiveness of the solutions is usually founded on very basic models and generic considerations that often bring to very uncertain savings. Indeed, deep renovation projects and high saving targets need accurate audits. The cost effectiveness of these activities can be demonstrated only if the results consider the level of accuracy, if the contracts will include a set of metrics calculated from third party service to guarantee the achievements of goals and if M&V activities are planned into commissioning phase.

Private investors can develop new business models that include the renovation of residential buildings only if the achieved saving are predictable and controlled along the live fine of the investment. Therefore, the energy audit and M&V service should be seen as driver and within 4RinEU we will demonstrate the reliability and cost-effectiveness of these steps in the renovation process.

The first stage was the analysis of building owners’ objectives in case of deep renovation projects. In particular: owners’ level of knowledge about the building in terms of existing problems, running and maintenance cost, usual building management, internal organization and documentation management, their setup and management ability of renovation process and their experience of performing/contracting an energy audit. This analysis was performed in all the 3 Demo-Cases which represent a wide range of different building owners typology, with different business model.

We believe that starting with a good setup of the process will result in a better and easy manageable project. The importance of an energy audit should be stressed at the beginning of the process, in the organization phase.

To validate the accuracy of the energy audit methodology that will be developed within 4RinEU, it is necessary to have a detailed base of measured data of building behaviour before and after the renovation. For this purpose Aderma, the responsible of this action, designed a monitoring system that enable the characterization of the hourly energy profiles of the Demo building as well as the occupants behaviour. The system is already installed in the Spanish Demo-Case and during the next months, it will be installed also in the other two Demo-Cases (in the Netherlands and in Norway). During the measurements, a first inspection of the building was carried out using IR Thermography, Blower door test and analyzing the HVAC systems installed.

By the end of the first year of the project, a first version of the energy audit carried out for the 3 Demo-Cases will be ready, and all the information recorded will form the base for starting the development of the 4RinEU cost-effective methodology for the energy audit.