By Tass
MOSCOW, July 2. /TASS Correspondent Dmitry Osipov/. Comfortable living conditions may stop the human resources outflow from the Arctic, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor at the Northeastern Federal University Terenty Kornilov said. The university’s experts are developing new solutions for the Arctic, including multifunctional houses with covered courtyards where kids could play even when the air outside is minus 50 degrees.
Regional standards for construction in the Arctic
Arctic settlements need to be compact, modern, and energy efficient, he continued. The latter is top relevant. We know that in Yakutia’s certain areas the heating season never stops – for example, in the village of Tiksi, the Bulunsky District. In that village beyond the Arctic Circle on the coast of the Laptev Sea, the air temperature in June and July is between 2 and 10 degrees Celsius. Thus, heating is never turned off to avoid hypothermia in buildings. Another problem is that Arctic buildings have low energy efficiency.
“Many buildings were built back in the Soviet time. The share of houses beyond the 50-years life service makes 14.9%. Most housing (78.2%) in the Arctic has centralized heat supply. The housing stock is mainly of wood timber and log – 70.6%. Such houses have low thermal specifications and do not meet modern energy efficiency requirements. Three years ago, the regional budget’s subsidies for heating in Arctic districts reached 4.5 billion rubles ($57 million),” the expert said.
Scientists have developed standards for energy-efficient low-rise buildings in the Arctic. “The enclosing structures and their nodal connections are based on thermal engineering calculations and modeling of heat transfer in load-bearing structures: monolithic frame structures, stone structures using concrete blocks, MHM panels, wooden frames. All the structures have passed construction and operation tests,” he added.
The scientist regretted that many Soviet solutions had been undeservedly forgotten, including two-or four-apartment buildings. According results of many surveys, young professionals prefer to live in houses with small plots.
A block of such energy-efficient blockaded houses was designed for the village of Olenek. Since there is no central water supply and sanitation in the village, each house has a room for autonomous engineering facilities. The project uses modular sewage treatment plants, where wastewater meets standards, and afterwards the water is discharged into artificial or natural reservoirs.
New Arctic settlements should be built in blocks of energy-efficient multifunctional residential complexes with engineering facilities and with economically reasonable operating costs, the expert said. The university has developed multifunctional residential complexes with an indoor courtyard, where kids could play and spend time even in winter.
He mentioned a well-known settlement for shift personnel at the Mayat mine of the Almazy Anabara Company in Yakutia’s Anabarsky District. One roof covers living rooms, a dining room, a gym, showers, a laundry, and a leisure center. The complex has a specific shape, and people have dubbed it accordingly – the Pentagon. It can accommodate 500-600 people.
Arctic Shamrock and Northern Clover are Russian military bases on Arctic islands. The complexes are fully autonomous and have similar structures: a large atrium in the main block’s center, shaped like a triangle, and the other rooms are located in adjacent blocks. This is about how our settlements should be made. In our big Arctic settlements we need to build big houses. Individual houses, of course, could be used, though as second housing for summer,” he said.
Those big buildings could house the administration, a post office, a library, a cultural center, and a winter garden. “A similar approach has been used successfully in Yakutia’s Udachny, where all houses are connected by warm walkways. This was the only solution of the kind implemented in the Soviet Union. Panel houses were connected by walkways. People did not have to go out in winter. Sure, we need to remember everything positive from the Soviet experience,” he said.
Americans and Canadians had similar projects, he continued. “However, only the Soviet project was actually implemented, and all the rest remains just on paper. A famous large-scale project is the city of Frobisher Bay for 4,500 inhabitants, designed in Canada by architect Earl Gardner. According to the plan, a reinforced concrete folded dome of 250 meters in diameter was to be in the center, and to it could be adjacent 36 residential tower-type multi-storey buildings. They even attempted building it, but that was huge money. Clearly, the project was not finished,” he added.
Local materials
The university offers standards for designers, and solutions to improve engineering and building materials.
The professor pointed to importance of using local materials. “At the Suntarskoye field, they’ve started making foam glass and they are building an experimental house. We’ve been developing actively this together with the manufacturer. Why zeolite is good? It may partially replace cement in concrete, while maintaining or even increasing its strength. It is environmentally and economically beneficial,” he says.
The university advises against bringing ready-made cement to remote construction sites, where it loses properties, and instead – to deliver clinker (a product of high-temperature firing and subsequent grinding of a caked mixture of limestone, clay and slags) and produce cement on site using grinding equipment.
“This is most important for the Arctic, where major trade and logistics centers are being created. Small cement production facilities may be organized right on the spot – to have fresh, high-quality and durable cement,” the professor noted.
This idea has been patented. “As for commercial concrete, we have been working on it as well. We know many additives to concrete and concrete mixtures to improve their strength and plastic properties. This is very important because the local sand, frankly speaking, is not of the highest quality. Whenever we are speaking about high-grade concrete – B30 or B35, used in construction, for example, for piles in permafrost areas – it’s impossible to do without a proper formulation and additives. Frost resistance of such structures should be at least F400,” he continued.
The institute has developed and implemented a formulation jointly with the Far Eastern Construction Systems Company at the region’s all major enterprises making reinforced concrete piles.
“Nowadays, practically all of them are using our composition. We’ve also signed a contract with a big international chemical company that produces building additives. By applying joint effort we promote advanced solutions and adapt them to Arctic conditions,” he added.
New regional standards require changes in legislation and regulations. This is the only way to stop the population outflow.
“Since the 1990s, the population in Yakutia’s 13 northern and Arctic districts has almost halved to 67,000. Drastic decisions could help to stop the outflow and ensure the influx of young specialists. Those may be multifunctional residential complexes where apartments, a kindergarten, and a school are in one building,” the engineer said.
How to keep a house in Yakutia warm
It is most important, the professor emphasized, that in the Arctic climate the enclosing structure did not have a single defect. Temperature fluctuations, wind, high humidity, and extreme frosts make building design a top-responsible process.
“Frame-monolithic buildings have been built in Yakutsk very actively,” he continued. “They build already 16-storey buildings, and some developers are designing buildings up to 24 floors. It is possible from the technical point of view. However, the higher is the building, the bigger is the thermal protection issue.”
Frame-monolithic buildings have certain disadvantages, primarily the thermal bridges – those are first of all protruding sections of reinforced concrete floors and columns, grillage (pile foundation’s connecting elements), first floors. These areas are cooled more strongly than other parts, which explains why they are called thermal bridges.
Existing thermal bridges cut significantly the building’s thermal protection and cause condensation. Therefore, frame-monolithic buildings require constructive approaches to thermal protection and to cutting thermal bridges’ influence.
“Imagine a grillage of 2.5 by 2.5 meters and at least 1.2 meters high, which unites piles and is closely adjacent to the base plate,” the engineer explained. “If it is not separated by thermal rupture, it turns into a cold accumulator. Moreover so, if there is a cold parking lot under the building.”
The institute’s specialists are developing and implementing a system of solutions to eliminate thermal bridges: replacing outer concrete blocks with light ones. For example, with those made of polystyrene concrete – to reduce heat transfer and create a thermal rupture.
The grillage separated from the basement slab by thermal fracturing reduces the cold zone effect on the building’s residential section. “A 10-centimeter layer of insulation between the grillage and the ceiling is sufficient to increase significantly the ground floor temperature,” the expert said.
Another effective design solution is to move columns from the end of the building so that to avoid freezing of the basement floor’s corner sections and to increase the junctions’ temperature from 1 to 7.13°C.
The most effective solution, the professor said, is to use the comprehensive external thermal insulation. The main thing here is to have insulation run continuously: from the base to the walls and to the roof.
“We have succeeded in having developers start laying insulation not from the inside, but from the outside. When the building’s thermal insulation is inseparable, the building works like a thermos. Special attention is to the corners – they traditionally freeze harder. Therefore, galvanized grids are used to fix mineral wool slabs in the walls corner and basement sections,” he said.
Another major problem is the air pressure difference in high-rise buildings. “You’ve probably noticed that in winter the door in a high-rise building opens with difficulty, it slams. This is due to the pressure drop – minus 50 outside and plus 20 inside. Any crack may conduct cold air. Especially so on the ground floors,” he continued.
The solution is absolute tightness, where engineers suggest using professional sealants, such as a technical compound and a self-expanding solution that is pumped into hard-to-reach places.
Even the balcony design requires a special approach: the partitions must not be adjacent to the outer wall not to become thermal bridges. The solution here is to have thermal fractures and perforations in balcony slabs.
Simple and pragmatic solutions are the key to the Arctic’s future, the professor noted. “We are not reinventing the wheel: we are getting back to reasonable approaches adapting them to modern realities. Multifunctional houses, a single warm space, compact buildings, and local materials – this all has worked once. The task today is to make this the norm. Not an experiment or an exception, but a regional standard. In that case the Arctic again will become a place where people want to come and where they want to stay,” the professor said in conclusion.