a) What is the problem/issue being addressed?
Deep renovation of buildings could cut 36% of their energy consumption by 2030, while reducing EU energy import dependency, creating growth, innovation and employment, reducing fuel poverty and resulting in more comfortable and healthier buildings . Additionally, the EU has set a target for all new buildings to be nearly zero-energy by 2020 .
Every building needs dowels to be constructed. Current dowels are an obstacle for the renovation of buildings, and addition of new technologies that support energy efficiency directives. The current dowels do not allow retrofit addition of elements onto the external building structure (balconies, natural ventilation facades structures, among others), they also do not guarantee an easy and secure fixation for solar panels on the facades , and cannot renovate or refurbish thermal insulation wall layer without the complete destruction of the wall. Moreover, it is impossible to use one single kind of dowel for multiple tasks: they cannot carry simultaneously lateral, transverse and tensile loads over large distances; for this reason, nowadays constructions need different type of dowels to support all the forces in a structure.
b) Why is it important for society?
As previously mentioned, European building sector are facing difficulties for various reasons:
•The installation of the current dowels requires too many tools and working time, due to its design and structure.
•The raw plugs/dowels do not allow to be used for multiple fixation of the additional elements (balconies) onto the external building structure and existing raw plugs are not able to cover multiple defining areas simultaneously.
•At least three different types of dowels or screws are required to support the lateral and tensile forces (facades).
•To remodel with the standard dowels it is necessary to destroy the entire wall, this will result in more construction costs, energy consumption and waste.
•Building industry is currently experiencing an increasing financial pressure due to escalating prices for raw materials and, particularly, energy.
In response to the technological drawbacks of the construction sector, and contributing to enhancing the competitiveness of the European building industry, our company proposes a new type of dowels for heavy duty loads and facades (See Figure 1), has demonstrated to be fast and easy to assemble, it can carry simultaneously vertical and horizontal loads, it covers a wide range of applications, it supports the European Energy directives in buildings (2010 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, and the 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive) and, can be recycled and re-used; it avoids the destruction of walls while renovating. Our INNOFIXX dowel system will enable construction companies all over Europe to install facades and other heavy loads much faster (50% time savings), more cost-effictive(40 % cost savings) and more flexible and sustainable (easy removable). By improving the energy efficiency of buildings, we could reduce total EU energy consumption by 5% to 6% and lower CO2 emissions by about 5% . HERZSPRUNG represents a SME innovation driver in the construction sector and knows that buildings possess a large potential to save energy consumption, and to reduce greenhouse gases, to respond not only to challenges like growing competition and quality demand but also, to aspects like climate change and fossil resource depletion.
Once commercialized and implemented, the INNOFIXX dowels will lead to millions € of cost savings increasing productivity and competitiveness of the European building industry. Such as reduce quantity of materials needed, simplify the effort in construction resource- and energy-efficient solutions are welcome in sectors still dominated by SMEs where energy costs are crucial.
Overall, some of the most important ambitions of INNOFIXX includes:
•To provide to the construction sector a tailor-made, h
