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Ecobuild part 1

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To Earls Court for Ecobuild. My first visit so wasn't quite sure what to expect. It's a curious hybrid. For a start it has combined this year with four other conferences - Cityscape, Futurebuild, Regenex and Building for Health. Then there's the mix of the core of exhibitors on the floor hawking products, with a whole bunch of seminars in conference and theatres dotted around the hall running alongside.

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Not having been before I was struck by how many delegates appeared to me from the general public. Has this always been the case? If not it's an interesting trend to see DIYers checking under floor heating and solar panels systems. Perhaps the message is getting across.

Product watch: the temperature controlling wall

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Here's an interesting new product, from an unlikely source. Eggheads at chemical firm BASF have come up with Micronal, a gypsum wall board which incoporates Micronal PCM "a microencapsulated latent heat storer that absorbs excess heat". The theory is that this material absorbs heat when it's hot and releases it when its cold, thus ridding a building's need for airconditioning. Clever eh? Merchant Wolseley certainly think so and are stocking it. I'm told one major contractor is already trialling the product with the material incorporated into blocks. See here and here for more info.

Product watch - nice pane

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One of the thousands of exhibitors at the aforementioned BAU event was the Interpane Group. Here's how some the firm's product looks like covering Renzo Piano's so-called 'glass whale' building on Colgne. There's 4,900 square metres of the stuff, called ipasol, used on this project. this is what they term 'solar control glazing'. For more techy info click below.

The BAU house

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Was there a better place for product nuts to be in than Munich last month? I maybe pretty ignorant but who else has picked up on the monstrously large BAU 2007 exhibition from 15-20 January? Some stats: 17 trade halls, 209,000 visitors, 2046 exhibitors from 44 countries all showing building materials, building systems and building renovation systems. A veritable Hamleys for specifiers.

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Here's more on it:

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Download factsheet_bau_engl.pdf

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The throwaway culture

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I have an ally in Times writer Richard Morrison. His piece yesterday broadened out my thoughts last week on design in housing. Morrison takes the findings of last week's CABE report on housing quality and expands it into how as a culture it is second nature to see products as throwaway (by the way I only stumbled into reading his piece via a discarded Times newspaper left on the Tube - oh the irony). Computers only last 18 months, mobile phones probably about 18 weeks etc. This built in obsolescence exists for housing, says Morrison. Why are rubbish residences being built? "Quick bucks, unscrupulous developers, lax controls" is his pithy reckoning.

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How hemp can save the planet

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There will be plenty of manufacturers making some bold claims at the upcoming Ecobuild in London at the end of the month. One such outfit is Lhoist, which reckons its new product can save more than 9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the UK every years. Yes, that's 9 million. How so? One word - hemp.

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Wood for good?

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Here's a hoary old debate to kick off the week with. What's the most sustainable building material? We're never shy of tackling the big ishues. The case for good is rather surprisingly put forward by The UK Timber Frame Association (UKTFA), whose chairman Stewart Dalgarno responded to English Partnerships’ latest competition, the Carbon Challenge by claiming that was has the "lowest carbon cost of any mainstream building material".

Could do better

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The construction supply chain has a long way to to get to grips with the buying and subsequent disposal of materials. Two reports out this week underline the point powerfully. One from the WWF finds that the UK is the third largest importer of illegal timber in the work, around £712m a year. It reckons 65% of this, a cool £462m, is in construction.

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And new figures from website Netregs, which gives advice to firms on waste regulations, claims that two thirds of contractor don't have a site waste management plan and 60% do not realise not having one is illegal.