Mark Summerfield - Burnley College
BTZ Rohr-Kloster covers a wide variety of vocational training, and are in the final stages of completing the fit out of a new centre which will specialise in energy efficiency measures for existing housing stock refurbishment, and new build Passive Haus demonstration and training, including pressure testing.
The concept behind the new centre is little short of inspirational – within the workshop environment they are building examples of the 7 local building methods and types which will be shown in cross section to allow training in insulation and energy efficiency techniques. Each property will also have a touch screen fault finding display which will require students to identify inbuilt faults and see the effect of energy performance changes.
The Centre also includes classroom space, a lecture theatre, and an example of a traditional timber medieval oak frames building to demonstrate traditional building techniques.
The cost of the build was 3 million euro, which was funded by 500,000 supplied by the centre, ESF funding contributing 2.3 million and the remainder being contributed by the local chamber of crafts.
The centre offers a course for energy assessors, similar in concept to the current Green Deal Advisors course, but the content and duration of the German course was much greater at 240 Guided learning hours and covers a wide range of topics in great depth. It may be a possibility for some UK delegates to come over and do a version of this course.
Back at the BTZ Rohr-Kloster Vocational Technical Centre, we discussed the day and exchanged ideas on what we had learned. Certainly there was good practice to be shared in the concept and layout of the new energy efficiency centre. It also highlighted to us the importance of having the knowledge and contacts of European funding opportunities.
Muhammad Yousef - Dan & Adam
The scale and nature of the facilities is truly impressive. The comprehensive approach to the applied skills training for renewable will render itself to providing world-leading practitioners in the fields. The coverage of practical (and theoretical) courses and range of users at the BTZ facility is extensive. It is setup to cater for school pupils, apprentices, adults and organisations a range of craftsmen. The courses range from full-time to part-time for a range of associated energy related activities form specific technologies to construction related in an integrated manner. A 6MW private solar energy farm at Rohr can be viewed in the not so far distance from the BTZ park.
The visit to BTZ accompanied a trip to the adjacent village to St. Michaels Church where lies the earliest crypt in Germany and anointed by German royalty regularly in the past as well as Martin Luther. However, the biggest surprise came at the end of our day from our exceedingly generous hosts at BTZ. Whilst entering the converted church on site, we were encountered by a two lane bowling alley on the ground floor and recreation centre! Our already stunned delegation were bowled out by this ‘strike’ of amazement.
Dan & Adam Ltd is an engineering consultancy specialising in renewable energy technologies and smart networks. Dan & Adam is focused on Smart Grids and Smart Cities. Our Smart Cities projects also include within their scope Smart Grids. We scope our projects to include Smart Buildings with particular attention being paid to the EU 2020 initiative for Net Zero Carbon construction projects and PassivHaus building standards. The BTZ facilities are designed to capitalise upon the Smart Buildings sector and in particular the challenging aspects of retrofitting buildings – as well as new establishments.
This approach from the BTZ and other similar training provides Germany with a competitive advantage in this sector that the UK should well consider replicating. This visit is already beginning to deliver its objectives of best practice exchanges and information on different approaches within the UK and Germany.
Owen Humphries - WYG Group
Breakfast - cheese sandwiches. Today was spent exploring the Chambers of Craftsmen’s regional PTZ technical college; Rohr – a regional centre of excellence for training trade-persons wishing to aspire towards establishing their own businesses; and which presently caters for over a 150 different trades – from bricklaying to Hairdressing. However it’s more then simply providing students with a certificate of technical competence – in plumbing, carpentry etc - but also includes for providing a sound grounding in all the administrative skill sets and business tools needed for running an SME - sustainably, legally and successfully.
After a brief introduction and cheese sandwich we toured the new renewable energy and sustainable building enterprise department; courtesy of a substantial grant from the ESF – a cool €3M. Once completed and formally inaugurated over the next few weeks, this department will essentially focus on bringing the array of trade-persons engaged within the renewable energy and building efficiency sector up to speed with current renewables technologies and Building Standards best practices – and as such will cover everything from retrofitting old building stock to current best building practices with respects to energy efficiency (i.e. building insulation) and renewables (i.e. biomass, biogas, ground and solar heating/cooling systems).
The department will also aspire towards demonstrating the construction techniques and renewables equipment needed to build the ideal “future house” – i.e. energy consumption…by my reckoning my house is presently some 2-3 times behind this target – but what with my new cavity wall and loft insulation going in next week courtesy of the Local Authority energy deal, and my new solar PV roof mount – it be interesting to see how close my 1970’s build get to this idealised Germanic “star Trek” house of the future!!
Regardless of this - depending what best whets your appetite; whether it be traditional log or wood pellet biomass boilers, or state of the art grid gas powered smart micro CHP, ground or solar heat pumps; there’s plenty of sexy looking proven technology at very affordable prices out there available on the market to select from – all of which comes with a commercially realistic pay pack time – reducing your energy bills and saving you money in the long run…which obviously comes on top of the savings you can by make by simply ensuring that your home is adequately insulated in the first place … Dirk – if there’s any money left over from this trip, please ask the PTZ to send some students over to my place with one of those nice looking blue biomass boilers as part of Leo’s international best practice exchange arrangements. I can provide the cheese sandwiches!
Renewables to one side – this technical college is about equipping the guys with the right skill sets to succeed in business – not just making them good craftmen – but equipping them to run their own businesses – successfully. Have we got this formal structure back home – it’s debateable?
When my wife phones me at work to inform me that the washing machine is leaking, or the vacuum cleaner is block and then proceeds to casually inform me that its however all Okay, and I don’t need to rush home as she’s called the “engineer” out on an emergency call-out – I generally cringe - not because this potential 2 minute “Jim’ll fix it” (oops! has he yet officially fallen from grace!!) call out is going to cost me £75 as a starter for ten, but because in England our “better halves” and those “who shall always be obeyed” have the audacity to call these largely ill-educated, poorly trained, illiterate bunch of Chancers - “engineers”…and not a proper formal qualification between them! If we put them all through the same paces as the BTZ, Chambers of Craftsmen, then those surviving the ordeal, would in my mind certainly be worthy of the title “engineer”.
All said and done and so as to bring back a bit of balance we do have some good guys… Mark Coburn of Ferny Hurst Avenue, Rownhams, Southampton; City and Guilds qualified plumber and lone trades man for these past 20 years has done a fantastic job at stripping out and modernising my bathroom to includes for all trades – demolition, blockwork, plastering, electrics, tiling, painting and decorating…and ho yes…a new plumbed in bathroom suite with walk-in shower room…since moving to the estate some 15 years ago, and solely by word of mouth advertising on past performance, he’s renovated half the kitchens and bathrooms on our 1970’s estate – quietly knocking them out at a stress free rate of 10-15 a year depending upon complexity!
However with injury time to play – on Day 2 it’s still nevertheless;
Germany 2 – England 0
(Mark Coburn’s attempt at goal narrowly passing the wrong side of the cross bar)!!
Back to the new building being raised by BTZ….
In the 1990’s a well known Japanese car manufacture sent it’s CEO 10,000 miles to England to find out why its new 5000 vehicle/month production factory construction project was running late; potentially losing the firm £50M a month turnover if opening was seriously delayed. The boss of the construction company unwittingly said that it was due to heavy autumn rains, delaying the various trades, both working internally and externally. The CEO paused and pondered…and after what seemed like an agonisingly long silence for the construction boss quietly replied…yes in Japan we have something called seasons, perhaps just like yours – one is very dry and warm; one is very cold and snowy; and the other two are generally just plain dull and wet! – so we are likewise familiar with this concept. The meeting was promptly, but politely, concluded, and the construction boss although relieved, but somewhat surprised for not receiving a “good proper” kicking, thought he’d pulled a flanker on his client and took his team down the pub to rightly celebrate a small victory…24 hours later the CEO’s lawyers then proceeded to successfully sue the Contractor for failing to provide sufficient construction resources and make sufficient provision for seasonal weather events as “explicitly” spelt out within the agreed terms of contract. The contractor, relying on his past excellent reputation to service several Japanese companies starting up within the UK promptly went bust as Orders were rescinded one after the other. Ironically the CEO would have paid over the odds to safeguard the completion of his project to his quality satisfaction and programme…if only told in advance!!
What’s this to do with the German’s at BTZ – well just this – I’m no Architect, but they built the new department with a flat roof and promptly mounted £10’s of £’000 of solar PV on the flat roof – it is not uncommon for this region of Germany to receive an average 5-6’ snow fall over the 4 month winter weather window – all in all – meaning that this renewable energy array will be pretty much be buried for 4 months of the year when the winter sun might just be at it’s most productive! Sustainability comes in many guises - this arrangement cannot be counted as a sustainable roof construction design, unless the Architects are thinking of the German Government employment sustainability policy and banking on the college paying €1/hr to the local unemployed to “work when work is available” and shovel snow several hours a day so as to preserve their client’s solar PV income!
Final score on Day 2 after added injury time!!
Germany 2 England 1!
Own goal by the German chambers of Architects (or whatever association they are affiliated to) in injury time for lack of joined up proper sustainable thinking!!
Evening meal – Cheese burger!
Rowan Langley - Funky Renewables
Today was our visit to the vocational training centre close to the town or Rohr. The site was a monastery between AD850 and AD1562, following the Reformation it has variously been the summer residence of German Kings, Otto 1,2 3, Heinrik 1, a sucession of private owners, the last one having to flee from Germany in 1932 owing ot the Persecution of Jewsish people by the nazi party.
We were introduced to the German system for regulation and support for trades, industry, commerce and trades. The Rohre Centre is operated by the Thuringe “Handwerkeskammer”. An approximate translation would be Chamber of Trades, or Chamber of Crafts. All businesses would register with the Kammer, from that registration fee training is funded, also legal advice to trades, financial advice, an Arbitration service, knowledge transfer, quality initiative and so forth. In the case of the Thuringe Handwerkeskammer, the a great many members would be between 1 and 5 employees.
Germany is spared the UK situation where anyone can put their card in the newsagents window or an add in the local paper and call themselves an electrician or a plumber. Until a person has completed both their two years training and the third year to obtain the degree of Master craftsman they are not allowed to start up in business.
My own memory of having been educated in the Academic stream leading to A-level qualification is that the system would seem to actively discourage young people from the trades. Not so for our hosts. Whichever of the three streams of secondary education one follows, the Handverkekammer organises numerous initiatives from age 13 onwards to introduce the Krafts to students, students have opportunities to undertake day or block release placements during their educations to sample the trades and to discover if they have a calling towards a particular trade. During our tour through the campus our hosts talked on the many summer camps organised in the school vacations. The Eskimos have about 300 different words for snow, in Germany there are 300 different words for the Trades.
At this centre trainees, students, appendices, whatever title one would use undergo the training in the theory of their trade. On our tour of the nearly completed building training centre we saw the demonstration houses starting to take shape in the first of the large halls. These represented the seven common building methods students would encounter, built as a cutaway model, and with each one having a number of deliberate mistakes included, which students would find during practical works as they made inspections tests, experiential measurements and so forth.
The second large hall will house the demonstration passive house. A passive house is one with extremely low external energy demand. The term “Passive” has a very strict definition, it must consume no more than 15 KWH per year for each square metre of floor area.
Such a building demands high standards of thermal insulation, ventilation, draft proofing, and generally would look to some sustainable energy input to meet that target.
In the hall section, even the plant room had been laid out in a way to make it an accessible educational resource.
The demonstration of low impact technology at the centre is long standing. We were shown with some pride a wall mounted solar-PV system installed in 1992, still working, using panels with a Thin Film technology which was a research material of the time.
Heating is usually the major energy consumer of a building. The building methods leading to the Passive house, or the next stage where the house can be a net contributor reduce the heat demands to the point where use of renewable and sustainable energy is viable. The Heating demonstration facility incorporated four technologies : Wood pellet, Whole wood, air sourced heat pump and a gas fired Combined heat and power generator. Nothing is wasted; the heat generated as the students carry out their practical assessments is captured in a 80 cu metre water tank, along with energy from the demonstration solar-thermal installation to provided a store of heat from which building heating can be drawn .
The German model holds the assessor as a key player in achieving the Energiewende. The entry requirements include the applicant being already qualified to the level of Master craftsman. Thye training is thorough,four months at 2 days a week, and to much greater depth than a typical five day course under the present UK model. The thick course manuals were on display, along with a selection of the tools and test equipment for either the practical assessment work or to illustrate the renewable technologies so that the assessor has a full understanding of their characteristics, strengths and limitations.
Following lunch we undertook one of the excursions to the nearby church of St Michael in the village itself, built in 852AD by the monks to be a subsidiary house, housing Nuns of the order.
Claire Chapman - Scottish Water
Today, we headed to the Mediaeval town of Rohr, once favoured summer residence of the ancient German kings. We were hosted by the regional vocational training centre, BTZ. Its remit is focussing on trade / craft skills for new build construction and refurbishment of existing buildings, and we were particularly looking at energy efficiency training skills.
It is a beautiful setting, having once been a monastery (the oldest in Germany), which closed 100 years back, and subsequently has been an education centre, in the middle of wonderful deciduous woodland on rolling hills, all splendid in their autumnal colours.
We toured the new buildings for Energy Efficiency, which are still being completed at a cost of 4 million Euros. Inside the building shell, various different building styles are being demonstrated, to allow students to practice energy efficiency on refurbishments.
The highest energy efficiency standard is a passive house, which uses 15 kWh/m2/annum (effectively no energy usage). If you can then install renewables on top of a passive house, it then becomes active, i.e. it can produce more energy than it needs.
We inspected a small New Zealand manufactured CHP unit, which produce 8 kW heat and 1 kW energy. It’s still too expensive to be mainstream, but I suspect it won’t be long before it replaces the condensate boiler as the standard domestic boiler in many homes!
And finally, we were allowed to test out some very expensive thermal heat imaging cameras (around 30 000 Euros a pop!), which the Energy Assessors are trained on. Before a domestic dwelling in Germany can obtain bank financing, they must have a visit from an Energy Assessor, to ensure that their home is not leaking Energy from poor insulation (i.e. it’s a good investment!).
This afternoon, we visited the Lutheran church of St Michael’s, which is one of the oldest buildings in the area (815 AD). The pastor very kindly took us down to the ancient crypt underneath the church. I noticed the blankets in all the pews, and he said there was no heating whatsoever in the building! Because so much of this ancient church is wood, it would not be good for it to be heated up. I have to say, it must keep the pastor’s sermons brief and to the point.
We drove home via the town of Suhl, famous for gun making, in particular the Walter PPK (used by 007). This evening, three of us went out to explore the woods for a run. It was particularly hard-core and very steep. I can see why this is such a popular area for skiing- very hilly! Tomorrow we are going to visit a pump-storage facility, so more of that tomorrow. But the good news now is that we have found a wireless connection in a local pub, so I am able to move out of McDonalds to enjoy a local beer whilst uploading this!
