According to its creators, there are several advantages to its beams. For starters, they weigh up to 80% less than concrete or metallic beams, which means that no heavy cranes or lorries are needed to carry and install them. Also, they save time and money on labor and materials, and they can be printed and assembled “in situ” — which facilitates their installation anywhere, regardless of how difficult it is to reach. Like that’s not enough, recycled plastics are used as the raw material, giving a new life to this product and thus helping move towards more sustainable construction.

The development of these innovative beams is the result of almost three years of research. “Our goal was to propose an alternative to the current reinforced concrete beams. These are made using profiles built for the length of the piece, which requires the expensive installation and are hard to transport,” says José Ramón Albiol, lecturer at the Higher Technical School of Construction Engineering (ETSIE) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

Following numerous hours of tests and trials, the combination of 3D printing, plastics and concrete provide optimum results.

The main novelty here is in the polymeric profile of the beam, which is composed of multiple longitudinal segments that can be assembled and concreted where you wish to install the structure. The beam is reinforced with elements that ensure the structure’s rigidity and which have no metallic component.

“This prevents corrosion, decreases the weight and simplifies the work time required,” adds Xavier Mas, from the Institute for Heritage Restoration (IRP) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

The system also removes the need for costly formwork and bending, making it possible to work without having to stop traffic at the infrastructure that is being worked on.

Plus, the internal (alveolar) structure of the polymeric profiles makes it possible to decrease the amount of plastic used — and therefore its weight — while maintaining structural rigidity.

This alveolar structure was inspired by human bones around the epiphysis, where there is a layer of cancellous bone with a trabecular disposition — the alveolar structure — and a thicker external layer of compact bone. “This is what we have transferred to these revolutionary beams, specifically to their profiles. It is a very intelligent natural system and its reproduction in these beams awards them, with the low structural weight, very high mechanical capabilities,” adds José Ramón Albiol.

3D printing makes it possible to manufacture customized pieces very near the area of implementation, which also simplifies transportation, saves costs and facilitates customization. “To be able to customize the beams in situ makes it possible to adapt the characteristics of each of them to the structural needs at each point of construction. The possibility to recycle polymeric materials to produce the beams significantly decreases their carbon footprint,” concludes Miguel Sánchez, from the Department of Systems and Computer Science (DISCA) of the UPV.

The post These Lego-like beams could revolutionize construction appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

Announced in January 2022, this system incorporates the world’s first nailable solar shingle, the Timberline Solar Energy Shingle (ES) — which is assembled at GAF Energy’s manufacturing and R&D facility in San Jose, California.

Dubbed to be in a “class of its own,” Timberline Solar is reliable, durable, cost-effective, easy to install, and “aesthetically superior.” The ES boasts an industry-defying depth of less than a quarter inch and integrates with traditional shingles to create a “sleek and attractive look.”

Over five million new roofs are installed on U.S. homes each year. One out of every four roofs comes from GAF, the sister company of GAF Energy and the largest roofing and waterproofing company in North America. With access to GAF’s national contractor network, GAF Energy is uniquely positioned to bring residential solar to the mass market, transforming more roofs into solar roofs each year.

“Solar roofs are the future of clean energy, and Timberline Solar is the game-changing innovation that will get us there,” said Martin DeBono, president of GAF Energy. “At GAF Energy, we have the capacity to scale this technology like no one else through GAF, bringing an integrated solar product that is weatherproof, affordable, and design-minded to homeowners across the country. We’re excited to lead the next generation of clean energy adoption.”

In September 2021, Timberline Solar achieved UL’s 7103 certification, which authorizes GAF Energy to install the system on residential roofs as a roofing and a solar energy product — making it the first of its kind to be recognized as both. In addition, GAF Energy worked with Sandia National Laboratories, a U.S. Department of Energy research and development lab, to verify the product’s strength, durability, and overall market readiness.

The Timberline Solar ES has received three awards from CES, including its highest honor, the Best of Innovation award, for “Smart Cities.” The product was also named an Innovation Award honoree in both the “Smart Cities” and “Smart Home” categories.

Beyond CES, the company received more than 20 individual awards and honors, including awards from Green Builder, TIME, Fast Company, Good Housekeeping, Popular Science, and the NAHB.

The post This company’s solar roof has the potential to power mass adoption of clean energy appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

The process starts with a 3D scan of a house, after which Ecoworks makes wood panels of identical shape and scale to be attached to the outside. As a result, even the most inefficient buildings can be turned into net-energy producers.

In that sense, these panels come with built-in solar panels and insulation. They are also reportedly easy to set up, with the company claiming they could be installed in as little as 20 minutes. A full building conversion, including replacing fossil-fuel-powered heat, can be done in a few weeks.

Even the wood these panels use is eco-friendly as it has been harvested only after achieving optimal carbon capture.

In a demonstration, an apartment block from the 1930s that used 450 kilowatt-hours per square meter of space was equipped with Ecoworks panels while the company monitored the changes in energy consumption.

After the installation, it became so inexpensive to heat, cool, and power, that the solar panels on the roof made this a carbon-negative building, whereas before it was listed as one of the least efficient in the whole nation.

Ecoworks is using artificial intelligence to identify the buildings that will be best suited for its technology. And it will have a ton of work ahead, with reports suggesting that in Germany alone – there are 30 million buildings that are in need of renovation over the next five years to meet prescribed climate targets.

The post This company makes prefab facades that make old buildings energy efficient appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

The concept sounds like it could truly revolutionize the construction industry, and the Chinese company’s recent feat was meant to emphasize just how disruptive its new system can be. Technically, the building was just assembled on a site in Changsha, by three cranes and a large workforce, as all the components were built in a local Broad Group factory and transported by truck.

The true innovation behind Broad Group’s product is the concept of building houses like cars. Everything is produced and assembled at a state-of-the-art factory in Changsha, and then transported to the desired location for assembly.

Built out of the Chinese company’s proprietary Bcore steel slabs, the pre-made modular components can be folded into a standard 40ft-high container that can easily be transported by land and sea, just like regular containers.

Once the containers arrive at the desired location, all that is required is an “extremely simple” installation process that involves tightening the modules together to form a building, and connecting the electricity and plumbing.

What’s more, the speed is just one of the many qualities of this building; its stainless steel structure is said to be 10 times lighter and 100 times stronger than conventional buildings, and is resistant to “mega earthquakes and typhoons”. It’s also considerably cheaper to make than traditional structures and carbon steel buildings, thanks in large part to the streamlined production process.

Furthermore, thanks to the 22cm-thick insulation, as well as 3 or 4-pane glass windows, and intelligent heat recovery system, the energy cost of the Living Building is reportedly 1/5 to 1/10 that of traditional buildings.

Broad Group claims Living Building can be used for luxury and public residential structures, as well as skyscrapers up to 200-storeys-high. Thanks to the modular design, the building can be disassembled and moved to new locations easily, and the position and number of walls, doors, windows and balconies can be changed after completion.

Finally, Broad Group claims that the 100% stainless steel structure of its Living Building is over 30 times more corrosion-resistant than carbon steel and has over 1,000 years of service life.

The post This company managed to erects a 10-storey apartment building in 29 hours appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

In October 2020, the team created an ultra-white paint that pushed limits on how white paint can be. In April 2021, they’ve outdone that. The newer paint not only is whiter — it’s the whitest paint ever and has earned a Guinness World Records title for it — but also can keep surfaces cooler than the formulation that the researchers had previously demonstrated.

“If you were to use this paint to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet, we estimate that you could get a cooling power of 10 kilowatts. That’s more powerful than the central air conditioners used by most houses,” said Xiulin Ruan, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering.

The researchers believe that this white may be the closest equivalent of the blackest black, “Vantablack,” which absorbs up to 99.9% of visible light. The new whitest paint formulation reflects up to 98.1% of sunlight — compared with the 95.5% of sunlight reflected by the researchers’ previous ultra-white paint — and sends infrared heat away from a surface at the same time.

In contrast, typical commercial white paint gets warmer rather than cooler. Paints on the market that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80%-90% of sunlight and can’t make surfaces cooler than their surroundings.

Two features give the paint its extreme whiteness. One is the paint’s very high concentration of a chemical compound called barium sulfate, which is also used to make photo paper and cosmetics white.

The second feature is that the barium sulfate particles are all different sizes in the paint. How much each particle scatters light depends on its size, so a wider range of particle sizes allows the paint to scatter more of the light spectrum from the sun.

“A high concentration of particles that are also different sizes gives the paint the broadest spectral scattering, which contributes to the highest reflectance,” said Joseph Peoples, a Purdue Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering.

There is a little bit of room to make the paint whiter, but not much without compromising the paint.

“Although a higher particle concentration is better for making something white, you can’t increase the concentration too much. The higher the concentration, the easier it is for the paint to break or peel off,” said Xiangyu Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who worked on this project as a Purdue Ph.D. student in Ruan’s lab.

The paint’s whiteness also means that the paint is the coolest on record. Using high-accuracy temperature reading equipment called thermocouples, the researchers demonstrated outdoors that the paint can keep surfaces 19 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their ambient surroundings at night. It can also cool surfaces 8 degrees Fahrenheit below their surroundings under strong sunlight during noon hours.

This white paint is the result of six years of research building on attempts going back to the 1970s to develop radiative cooling paint as a feasible alternative to traditional air conditioners.

Ruan’s lab had considered over 100 different materials, narrowed them down to 10 and tested about 50 different formulations for each material. The technique that the researchers used to create the paint also is compatible with the commercial paint fabrication process.

The researchers have partnered with a company to scale up the paint and put it on the market. Patent applications for this paint formulation have been filed through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.

This research was supported by the Cooling Technologies Research Center at Purdue University and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program. The research was performed at Purdue’s FLEX Lab and Ray W. Herrick Laboratories and the Birck Nanotechnology Center of Purdue’s Discovery Park.

The post Researchers create the whitest paint that is also the coolest appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

Said homes can be made twice as fast with 95% fewer labor hours and ten times less waste than conventional construction. Additionally, on-site renewables and climate control technologies further reduce the environmental impact of Mighty Buildings homes — key features for both the occupants of the homes and the surrounding communities.

The company is also working with compliance and regulatory agencies to develop future-forward materials that are tested to the most rigorous standards with nearly zero-waste production methods.

Mighty Buildings’ longer-term vision is to use a combination of 3D printing, robotics, and advanced composite materials, paired with the latest in design thinking and strong supply chain partnerships, to create a network of micro Mighty factories. Such facilities can produce 200-300 homes per year in locations where housing gaps exist, creating sustainable housing options quickly, locally, and at scale.

The company’s projects range from pre-designed ADUs for homeowners to single-family residential developments utilizing their unique panelized Mighty Kit System.

But you can’t do it all alone, and in that sense, Mighty Buildings has been partnering with other development companies to support their construction efforts. One of them is Palari Group, with which Mighty Buildings is developing what is deemed to be the world’s first community of 3D-printed zero net energy homes located in Rancho Mirage, California.

Specifically, Palari plans to develop the 5-acre parcel into a planned community of 15 eco-friendly homes, built utilizing the 3D-printed panelized Mighty Kit system by Mighty Buildings. This $15 million sustainable development is the world’s first planned community of 3D printed homes and is centered around the integration of technology and sustainability. From the 3D-printing production process which eliminates 99% of construction waste, to the efficiency of operations with solar energy and weather-resistant materials, to the efficiency of the homes themselves — the project aims to minimize its environmental impact and offer smart and healthy homes to sustainability-minded buyers.

Featuring textured exterior stone walls and floor-to-ceiling windows, each property will complement its natural surroundings with mid-century modern architecture and will consist of a primary residence of 1,450 square feet, comprising 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a secondary residence of 700 sf comprising 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. Situated on a large 10,000 sf lot, each backyard will feature a swimming pool with deck and views of the surrounding mountains with plenty of space for lounging and desert star-gazing. Homes will integrate DARWIN by Delos, a state-of-the-art wellness intelligence solution to help enhance human health and well-being by improving indoor air quality and implementing localized water filtration and circadian lighting. All energy needs will be supplied by solar, with optional Tesla Powerwall batteries and EV chargers for a fully integrated electric car-home experience. Other upgrade options include backyard amenities such as pergola decking, cabanas, hot tubs, firepits and outdoor showers.

Furthermore, to support its efforts, Mighty Buildings has raised a total of $100 million from investors such as ArcTern Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, Decacorn Capital, Gaingels, Khosla Ventures, Klaff Realty, MicroVentures, Modern Venture Partners, Polyvalent Capital, Vibrato Capital, to name a few.

The post This company makes carbon-neutral 3D printed homes appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

The project is slated for a large tract of land in southeast Chicago, which used to be the home of steel plants. Many developers had their eyes on the plot but found that the cost of cleaning up the pollution was huge – meaning all that soil would need to first be removed, costing hundreds of millions. But The Invert had another idea. They would build from the one side of the lot that wasn’t contaminated, and dig underneath the contaminated areas, carving rooms out of the limestone rock deep underground.

The rock will be excavated to create big underground spaces, supported by huge, 36-by-36-foot pillars of limestone. The extracted stone will be sold, and renewable geothermal energy will be used for heating and cooling, if possible.

The company also plans to build a large solar field on the top of the site to provide electricity. Special LED lights will be used to mimic natural sunlight for workers underground.

Like that’s not enough, the energy savings from building underground will create a more sustainable home for facilities such as data centers and vertical farms. And in that sense, vice president of design for the Invert Chicago Isaac Yun said that the project could create thousands of permanent jobs, which could end up helping to pay for cleaning up the site.

“We’re literally creating a new taxable property that currently doesn’t exist today,” Yun said. “That’s going to promote the overall value of this property to where years from now, and hopefully sooner than later, we can start addressing some of those concerns on the ground.”

The post Subsurface real estate project aims to rejuvenate polluted areas appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

Manufactured by Pocklington, UK-based Construction Automation Company, the Brick Laying Robot is being put into operation at a construction site to replace people, ensure safety and health.

The machine is mounted on a track a rides atop a 30 foot (9 meters) high frame, eliminating the need for scaffolding and for people to work at height. It needs two workers to control it, load bricks and mortar into its feeds, and also to complete damp-proofing and the pointing that finishes the mortar joints.

The system is controlled by a tablet-based user interface and employs a “sophisticated software control system” that allows it to read digital copies of architectural plans.

The quality of the building by the ABLR robot is ensured by sensors that measure each individual brick to align it and match with the edge of the next brick, creating a solid structure. Once completed, this will be the first home in the UK built with a robot and possibly the first in the world.

“Our goal is to automate housebuilding as far as we can,” said one of Construction Automation’s founders, Stuart Parkes. “By doing this, we can increase productivity for the industry, improve health and safety, and guarantee quality.”

The post Brick-laying robots can build affordable houses appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

Rogla, which is a Slovenian winter tourism center, added a new experience to its guests — letting them walk along the elevated pathway among the treetops and get to know Pohorje from a different perspective.

The total length of the Pohorje Treetop Walk (Slovenian: Pot med krošnjami) is about 1,000 meters, of which the path is about 560 meters long. The nature experience facility starts at ground level on top of the mountain Rogla. After about 2/3 of the way, the path culminates in an approximately 37-meter high viewing tower.

Also, along the way – there are information stations, where visitors can learn about the features of the Pohorje environment.

The entire treetop walk, including the viewing tower, is wheelchair and pram-friendly and offers a 360-degree view over the mountain peaks and valleys of the Pohorje Mountains.

The Pohorje Treetop Walk is not a one-shot project for the ski center; rather, it’s a continuation of the development of experiential products and services that have been introduced at Rogla.

From the opening day onward, a few adrenaline and educational stops will await the visitors along the walk. New content will be added every year, starting with a nearly 40-meter slide that was opened in Spring 2020. Adrenaline enthusiasts will thus be able to slide from the top of the tower down to the walk. Also, the treetop walk is dubbed a perfect experience for corporate groups.

The post This treetop walk lets people experience nature on a whole new level appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.

Perhaps the most interesting part is that the sand from crushed bottles is better than the ordinary sand because of its high silica content, which holds better with bricks and concrete.

The company had a relatively modest success in New Zealand, where it managed to sell about 300 machines to local businesses — though part of that has something to do with the muted economic conditions of the past few years

The real growth has been overseas, with export markets including island resorts in the South Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Maldives.

Expleco is also working to supply its glass-crushing machines to 50 hotels in New York City, and to supply 40 bars in a Texas football stadium.

Also, it is helping the Glass2Sand project in India, which aims to reduce the environmental impact of non-recycled glass bottles. Said initiative aims to reduce glass waste by collecting discarded glass bottles and crushing them into sand.

However, we would think Expleco’s most interesting project is with New Zealand beer company DB Breweries, which installed fancy-looking bottle crushing machines to turn their DB Export Beer bottles into usable sand.

The post This machine crushes beer bottles into sand for construction appeared first on Sustainable Avenue.