It's consuming more than anticipated for heating,largely due to air leakage; they used the new BREFAN to find the cracks, andfound the roof/wall interface to be responsible for some 16% of the heatingenergy. They've since tried caulking and air-sealing, and hope that this winterit'll perform better. It is performing very well in cooling; the occupants aredelighted, and my personal experience is on the hottest day of the summer todate the building was very comfortable at 5:30 in the evening. The main lessonMatt got from the building was "Keep It Simple, Stupid" - he feelsthat the complex EMCS controls may not be robust over years, and is difficultfor the building operators to program easily. (Sound familiar?) That being said,it is one of the lowest CO2 emitting buildings in the UK, on a square foot offloor area, and on a per occupant basis.
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And, the fact that many of these buildings are distinctly crooked after centuries of settling into the Amsterdam mud lends itself to a slight spatial dislocation for passersby. One building I just had to photograph has three distinct changes in direction up the one corner.... The fact that they were constructed with lime mortar has ensured that the buildings are still (mostly) structurally sound; the lime mix, unlike modern cement-based mortars, slowly adjusts to differential settlement, naturally filling in cracks and holding the bricks and stones in place. These oddities helped me put Anton Albert's modern work in context (more about this later.)
I found Bangkok fascinating - in much the sameway that a child views a horror film, through the cracks between his fingers. Ifthere was ever a persuasive argument for planning of urban areas, Bangkok is it.As far as I can tell, Bangkok evolved from being a charming Asian city, definedby its khlongs (canals), mix of colonial and vernacular buildings, tropicalvegetation, and organic street layout, to a noisy, polluted and overstressedmegalopolis in the course of two explosive decades of unrestrained, incoherenteconomic and population growth.
As I mentioned, only the larger streets havesidewalks. For a handicapped person, Bangkok would be virtually impossible.Buildings are often approached by stairs meant to be impressive, but with noprovision for wheelchairs. Large street intersections have elevated pedestrianbridges - and no ramps. Even the new Skytrain stations often lack elevators.There are few sidewalk curb cuts, and the paving blocks are often missing,heaving, or have disappeared into holes dug by water; sewers often have crackedor missing covers. Pedestrians in Thailand must continuously watch their step,or risk a broken ankle.
More modest houses were made of almost entirelyof bamboo; I had the luck to sleep in several of these during a "trek"through the rainforest. These houses were owned by members of the hill tribes,the Karen and the Aung, whose living is now largely made from tourists. Inthese, the walls and roofs were thatched, and floors were a lattice of splitbamboo, laid closely over joists at roughly two-foot centres. These floors weredelightful to walk on; the bamboo is laid shiny-side up and has a sensoustexture, and split to a thickness of perhaps a quarter of an inch, was soft andflexible between the joists, like a fine carpet. They not only let air flowthrough them, they were also very easy to clean; a few sweeps of broom alloweddirt and dust to fall through the cracks to the pigs below. (No, they didn'tsmell: manure was obviously gathered regularly, and probably applied to the ricefields.)
Wiring was often an electricians' nightmare:taped or simply twisted connections; wires draped over the nearest handy tree orpipe; and often unprotected conductors running for hundreds of meters outdoorswithin easy reach of small children. One night in my hotel in Phuket, I noticeda crackling, sizzling sound outside; on further investigation I saw that theutility's transmission wires were briskly spouting a foot-long stream of sparksat one set of insulators just behind my room. This continued for over a week.... 2ff7e9595c
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