As we are advancing through the Final Design Phase, our focus is shifting towards the legal, economic, and technical aspects of the Petite Maison.
If the act of reusing construction elements is to become a safe common practice and a good economic alternative, then a certain number of information and procedures are to be standardised.
Together with a team from LIST, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, we started to develop a customised material inventory intended to record and state the conditions of use, the possible modifications and knowledge about the ecological footprint of the elements after each use.
This Inventory tool is structured in 6 generic categories.
1.Raw materials
In this category we will archive information on the processes performed at the extraction of the raw materials used in the making of an element. As we are trying to establish a TIME-LOCATION ROAD MAP based on the origin of each element, this category is subdivided in:
a.Type of the extraction procedure with date of extraction and the ecological footprint of the procedure.
b.Location (country of origin and rough distance from the extraction point to the Belval campus).
c.Distance from the extraction point to the processing unit (with the location of the processing unit, the transportation means as well as the approx. ecological footprint of the transportation process).
d. Workers Welfare
2.Processes
With the raw materials arrived in the manufacturing plants, we will state the types of the processes performed as well as the ecological footprints of the processes, their durations and the working conditions of the labour.
3.Transportation and stocking
As the elements are finished, the transportation and the stocking conditions are to be tracked. This category will offer information on the transportation means, the intermediate stopping nodes, distances, dates of departure/ arrival, stocking conditions, ecological footprint and working welfare.
4.General information of the element
Containing information on: Function of the element in the building, type of the element (ex: HEA 320), location in the building, weight, chemical composition...
5.Performance and resistance
By case, this category will archive information about: load bearing capacities, thermic Resistance (max/min), humidity resistance and seismic Resistance
6.Environmental conditions of use
This last category will share the information regarding the conditions of all the utilisation cycles in the element’s life.
For every use this category will contain information on:
a.The types of loads performed on the elements, the lowest and highest temperature to which the element was exposed.
b.The types of protections or needs (if the case) used against rust, aging, low or high temperature as well as the transformations/interventions performed on the integrity of the elements and the way these transformations affect the performance.
c.Possible stresses that might have affected the quality of the materials like flooding, overloading (x tonnes), fire, etc…
The future users of the Petite Maison’s building elements, as anyone who is willing to build, should have access to all the information needed to understand the effects of the different building processes and materials’ origins. A digital barcode directed to the inventory will be attached on each element.
On the long-run, Petite Maison, as part of Esch22, is meant to lay the groundwork of a real reusability culture in the building industry of Luxembourg, therefore, the act of REUSE should pass a series of quality and legal filters. This ELEMENT INVENTORY is our way to ensure that the building elements of the future will provide a safe environment not only for the future users but also for the global society.
All the best,
Carole, Dragos, Bruno, Melanie, Annie, Sophie, Christoph and Andras