Serial renovation in municipalities

The Oberhausen model – as part of a municipal renovation project, the city of Oberhausen is renovating seven teaching swimming pools, five of which have been provided with straw insulation. The five locations are walls made of masonry or reinforced concrete, which have been insulated with LORENZ DD34 wood-straw modules and then boarded with larch wood. With the insulation, the wall reaches a U-value between 0.126 and 0.127 W/(m²K), which corresponds to passive house standard.

Due to the low energy requirements for the production and execution of the straw insulation, the primary energy input (PENRT) for the insulation project has already paid for itself after just a few weeks of operation and energy savings.The eco-balance of the new insulation looks even more impressive: If the old materials reinforced concrete, concrete (or clinker construction) facade and polystyrene of the existing wall were produced at the same time as the straw insulation, a total of more greenhouse gases would have been removed from the atmosphere than supplied (between -10 bis -34 kg CO₂ eq/m²); 1m² of the modules used removes a total of 60 kg of CO₂.

Per m², the straw insulation results in an energy saving of 37 kWh. After completion of the energy refurbishments of the seven teaching swimming pools, the savings will amount to around 6,600,000 kWh/a (kilowatt hours per year) according to the city’s own information. This corresponds to a saving of around 8 percent of the total consumption of the city of Oberhausen.