The University of Bath’s Chancellor, HRH The Earl of Wessex, will open a new £1 million research facility on 25th September to help reduce the carbon footprint of buildings.
The HIVE will be unique in the UK for its ability to provide a flexible, real-world environment in which to test low carbon construction materials and systems.
Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), it is located at the University’s Building Research Park at The Science Museum Group at Wroughton, near Swindon.
Before being incorporated into real buildings, new building materials and systems are developed in the laboratory and must be evaluated at full scale.
Finding suitable space, securing planning permission and installing the necessary scientific and technical infrastructure can cause delays to the process – in some cases meaning that research findings can take 10 years to be put into practice.
The HIVE resolves these issues, providing a ‘ plug and play’ facility and expertise where researchers and companies can test and evaluate materials and systems, thereby bringing new technologies to market more quickly.
The building has eight individual cells which are carefully constructed to be completely insulated from each other, each with a single face left exposed to the external environment.
The faces are used to install and test walls made from a whole range of materials and construction systems and the performance of these walls is evaluated in real life conditions.
Tests available include a material’s environmental and hygrothermal performance (ie. the movement of heat and moisture through a building), alongside its ease of building and durability.
In addition researchers can evaluate the internal environment that construction materials create. It can also gauge the performance of construction materials in harsh weather conditions, such as flooding and high winds.
Dr Mike Lawrence from the University of Bath’s Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering and director of the project, said: “The built environment is currently responsible for 50 per cent of all carbon dioxide emission, making it the largest single emitter in UK.
“The Building Research Park is a pioneering site which will speed up the delivery to market of future energy-efficient construction materials and systems.”
At the opening on 25th September, select guests from Government, industry and academia will be invited to tour the Research Park.
Dr Peter Bonfield, Chief Executive of the BRE Group and Dr Lesley Thompson, the EPSRC’s Director of Sciences and Engineering, will give keynote speeches on the research potential the HIVE presents.
