Construction

– for greater comfort and improved durability

The Arctic climate is tough on building materials and constructions. The presence of permafrost alone constitutes a special challenge when it comes to laying a road or preparing the foundations for a building.

As regards building and construction, GIC and ARTEK will help to promote ideas intended to:

• utilise raw materials and substances that occur naturally on Greenland
• improve and/or expand local road networks
• set up new and existing buildings in such a way as to ensure reduced energy consumption
• use available knowledge about energy-saving building materials and processes as the basis for
starting a commercial project

Since the beginning of the working relationship with ARTEK, appreciably more time, effort and resources have been devoted to research into and experiments involving Arctic construction in Greenland. Examples include:

• the use of low-energy windows
• ventilation involving heat recovery
• the use of Greenlandic clay/silt for the production of bricks, flagstones and tiles.
• the construction of roads on permafrost

Thanks to a large donation from the Villum Kann Rasmussen Fund and strong support from a range of sponsor companies, a low-energy house has now been built in Sisimiut on ARTEK's initiative – as an example of how Arctic housing can be constructed in the future to ensure that it is energy efficient.

The house was completed in 2005 and now functions primarily as a research laboratory for ARTEK. For example, work is currently underway to examine how the low-energy materials chosen affect the interior climate and humidity levels in the various constructions.

The most important energy-saving aspects of the house are:

• more insulation than usual in the wall, floor and roof constructions
• low-energy windows, developed especially for Arctic conditions
• a ventilation system that features heat recovery – developed especially for Arctic conditions
• solar energy for heating rooms and water

The long term perspective suggests that it will be possible to make significant reductions in the volume of oil imported for heating – particularly if the remainder of the energy requirements of a low-energy house can be covered by combined heat and electricity generation based on solar energy, hydroelectric power and/or refuse incineration.

Naturally, building a low-energy house is expensive, but if the measures adopted can, at the same time, eliminate the need for oil in a building with a 50-year service life, the project is still a good example of sustainable development in the field of construction.

Find out more about the low-energy house in Sisimiut.