The Upcycle House is part of a large development project: The MiniCO2 Houses. The project involves a total of six detached houses, each of which illustrates various aspects of reducing CO2 emissions in the construction, use and maintenance of a house.
The Upcycle House was designed and built to explore how upcycling can help save on resources and reduce carbon emissions.
Upcycling can be defined as the optimum conversion of waste materials into new materials or products of better quality. Examples of this in the Upcycle House are the wood plastic composite decking of the terrace/patio, and the underfloor insulation made from shredded polystyrene foam packaging discarded by a local furniture dealer. Insulation in the walls consists of a granulate of treated, old newspaper, and the flooring in the kitchen consists of used wine-bottle corks cut into slices.
In the big picture and in a resource-constrained world, upcycling means that fewer "virgin raw materials" are used and fewer materials are manufactured, thereby reducing carbon emissions, minimising climate change and contributing to the sustainable use of the world's resources.
About the Upcycle House
The foundations of the Upcycle House consist of two second-hand shipping containers. These have been located to form an approximate square. Examples of upcycling and recycling in the Upcycle House:
Exterior:
• Foundation of recycled steel helical screw piles
• Underfloor insulation of shredded polystyrene foam (EPS) from furniture packaging
• Plinth/rodent proof barrier made from nylon panels from a former ice rink
• Façade panels from recycled paper and bioresin
• Façade cladding of aluminium sheeting containing aluminium from recycled beer and soft drink cans
• Reused windows in the greenhouse from a demolished school. Windows in the thermal envelope are off specification triple-glazed window panes fitted on the outside of the facade, sealed with rubber sealing strips. This means the window dimensions do not need to be precise as long as they are larger than the window opening.
• Patio decking made from recycled plastic and wood granulate
• Cladding made from recycled tiles
Interior:
• Flooring made from used bottle corks, non-bonded OSB flooring made from surplus furniture parts and flooring of reconstituted bricks.
• Drywall cladding containing 25% recycled plasterboard; walls of unbonded OSB panels – and a thermal mass wall consisting of filled water containers made from recycled plastic.
• Insulation of paper wool made from recycled, local newspapers; crushed-glass insulation from recycled glass; insulation with woodwool slabs; and insulation from the granulated polystyrene of discarded fruit boxes.
• Reused kitchen and bathroom cabinets
Reducing carbon emissions
Building the Upcycle House generated significant CO2 savings because the recycled materials used had already been produced in large volumes and were readily available, thereby reducing carbon emissions by many tons. Carbon emissions from the building materials used in the Upcycle House were 86% less than in the Reference House. Over a period of 50 years construction of the Upcycle House emits only 0.7 kg of CO2/m2/yr compared with the Reference House figure of 5 kg of CO2/m2 yr. The reason is simply that the recycled materials are already part of a life cycle, having impacted the environment when they were first manufactured.
The MiniCO2 Houses development project
The Upcycle House is one of six demonstration homes built in the coastal town of Nyborg in central Denmark. Five of the houses examine various ways of reducing carbon emissions; the sixth house brings these experiences together.
For many years, the efforts of the building industry to reduce CO2 emissions – not without reason – have focused on energy for heating and therefore also on airtightness and insulation. However, as national and EU building requirements become ever stricter in this area, it becomes relevant to examine how the industry can also reduce carbon emissions – for example, in terms of materials and of user behaviour.
The main objective of the MiniCO2 Houses development project is thus to reduce CO2 emissions in the construction, operation and maintenance of a house.
The six houses share the same overall principles:
• Building type: Single-family detached home
• Size: 130 to 172 m²
• Energy guidelines: Danish 2015 Standards
• Budget: Normal economy
• Architectural design: Broad appeal
• Future: Sale of the house after completed experiment
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