Late last year, we introduced Bureau Stoer, a podcast in which Thomas van Belzen, together with a team of experts, engages in conversation with high-profile experts in the construction and installation industries. Since then, some troubling issues have come to light. We highlight a few of them below.
Waterlogging threatens the construction of tens of thousands of homes
During these periods of heat waves and the resulting drought, water is naturally a hot-button issue. But the fact that the construction of tens of thousands of homes each year is at risk due to future problems with drinking water connections goes beyond the hype. In this episode, housing association executive and former CFO of drinking water company Vitens, Marike Bonhof, warns of the problem. And she’s not alone in this. Nikéh Booister, a strategic expert on water safety at engineering firm Sweco, shares Bonhof’s concerns. “As a country, we’re pushing the limits of our soil and water systems. That’s an urgent problem.”
The building plan as a Wailing Wall: how objectors slow things down and drive up costs for builders
Partly due to objectors, it takes an average of ten years before construction begins on housing projects. Yet most of these objections don’t hold up in court. And that also results in significant costs for builders. In this episode of Bureau Stoer, Victor de Beus, co-founder of modular homebuilder Tala, explains that homes from three projects are currently stored in a warehouse. That alone costs more than 100,000 euros in storage fees.
“The state of the world is because we’re doing the wrong things energetically.”
Not everyone is eager to hear Ronald Rovers’ research findings and publications. Especially not when he claims that the construction industry is acting criminally by wasting an unnecessary amount of materials and energy. We spoke with Ronald Rovers. “If we’re all completely honest, we’d have to stop using fossil fuels tomorrow and impose a lockdown. Life without gas, oil, and coal. Just ask yourself how you’d survive as a person or a business under those circumstances.” And CO2? That’s not the problem at all—it’s a consequence.
Housing cooperatives are losing money on every home
Housing cooperatives are teetering on the brink of collapse if the government does not quickly and thoroughly revise its vision for social housing, warns housing cooperative expert Johan Conijn. “To carry out the tasks housing authorities will face in the coming years, they’ll have to borrow a great deal of money. But at some point, that money will run out.”
Things are going very wrong with the environmental performance calculations for ventilation systems
“This can’t be right,” thought researcher Gerben Broekhuijsen when he first saw how the environmental impact of systems is factored into environmental performance calculations for buildings (MPG). These are mathematical “errors” ranging from 17 to nearly 300 percent. In other words: buildings that, on paper, meet the legal MPG requirement are, in reality, far less environmentally friendly.
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