Nízkoenergetický dům v Sušici

For more than 10 years SEVEn has been working in the area of low-energy buildings. It takes part in both the planning phase and the realisation phase as a consultant in the area of energy savings. The aim is to demonstrate to the general public the possibilities of lowering a building’s energy demands with minimum or zero extra costs compared to a normal building. In cooperation with architects, the top professionals in the field and international participation several such buildings have been realised.

A consequence of the high energy demands of buildings is a degraded environment. We must admit that additional insulation for a building brings increased costs and often has no real economic return. Through additional insulation we are correcting mistakes made in the past, which we have to pay for. But why repeat those mistakes today?

SEVEn promotes the idea of preventing these unnecessary expenditures by making buildings that are better designed and built. We know that in such a case the investment makes economic sense. It does not have to be a super-energy-saving building that hardly needs any energy at all but costs a great deal to build. Nowadays there are designs available that dramatically reduce energy demands without an increase in the investment costs of the building.

These thoughts cannot be applied without real projects that, through practical examples, convince architects, builders and investors of the sense of designing energy efficiency into a new building. SEVEn has managed to find like-thinking partners and clients in the renowned institutes UNDP and GEF. These international institutions opened and financed a three-year project that shows, using the example of small tenement buildings, how the future of environmentally friendly constructions could look. At the same time the project should demonstrate the low costs of such a solution. The first results are already showing that the investment costs do not differ significantly from conventionally built houses of this type and their lower energy consumption will bring savings in operational costs for their users. In comparison to a conventional building the energy demand will be reduced by more than 30 - 40%.

Apart from the construction of the demonstration flats another part of the project aims at analysing the available financial resources, at verifying the norms that are valid in this area and at supporting education.

In relation to these activities working seminars are organised attended by Czech and foreign experts alike.

The project’s essence is not just to define repeatable principles and build a demonstration building, but primarily to form an environment that allows similar buildings to be built in the future.