On the 15th of September, a VIOLET Community of Practice (CoP) meeting took place at the municipal offices of Middelburg. In compliance with the Covid-19 measures it was still possible to organise a physical meeting as long as the social distancing could be maintained, although the pandemic did force some participants to decide to pass.
Present were representatives of the municipalities of Middelburg and Veere, Erfgoed Zeeland (the regional heritage organisation), HZ University of Applied Science and the construction/installation and glass sector.
Experiences, thoughts and ideas on several topics were discussed as well as news about technical developments.
Since the introduction of the Sustainable Monument passport (SuMo) concept in 2019, over 150 sustainable monument passports have been issued. There is an ongoing national project to introduce the SuMo-passport to other regional heritage organisations.
The SuMo-coach reports about the work in progress with monument-owners who are adopting, or are considering to adopt, sustainability measures. So far, the SuMo-coach has guided over 20 owners and measures have been taken in 17 cases. There is a lot of interest in the SuMo-coach and several buildings are on his waiting list.
Experiences with policies, building permits—including the ‘flash’ permits in Middelburg—are currently being discussed and ideas exchanged about improvements and possible introduction with more municipalities.
The HZ University of Applied Science will be able to purchase a blower door test thanks to a kind donation of the Rabobank. This test equipment is a great asset for locating draft in historic buildings.
Blower door test
The HZ University has students available for research projects in the fields of policy analysis, developing ‘flash-permits’, data analysis, inventory historic glazing, and so on.
A technical new development is a CO2 heat pump with a hardened boiler, which is able to deliver heat to several systems. A big advantage to this is a return up to 6 Coefficient Of Performance (COP).
In a brainstorming session at the CoP meeting, the following ideas/issues were put forward:
- Revamping the website www.duurzamemonumenten.nl for the purpose of education and sharing knowledge and information
- Reducing the costs for the SuMo-passport through a subsidy
- Intensifying promotion for the several projects
- Organising a symposium for policymakers and owners with larger monument-portfolios
- Researching possibilities for easy permits for insulation of roofs and floors
- Exchanging experiences with other municipalities
- Heritage buildings could benefit from Hydronic balancing
- Most import aspect is to save energy before generating sustainable energy. Can generated energy be connected to historic buildings in other situations?
Hydronic balancing
The aim is to elaborate several of the ideas for the next CoP Meeting.
