Something for the ears: the World of Acoustics – behind the standard

Horst Wildemann: modular construction professor tackles construction // Marie Striewe: making the bathroom barrier-free // A phone box for living: Bloon // Freshly wallpapered: bathroom walls with paper instead of tiles

TECE, the magazine

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1 Sound insulation is quality of life: About the phenomenon behind hearing ....................... Page 02

The human ear: Hearing experiments  ............................. Page 08

Sound insulation in construction Visit from a sound inspector  ............................................. Page 10

Sound insulation and fire protection Blown-in insulation for pre-walls ..................................... Page 12

2 Is it possible to build 70% cheaper? Professor Wildemann is tackling construction  .............. Page 16

Hotel construction with perspective: Two rooms, one element  ................................................... Page 22

Virtual water: So much water in your computer  ..................................... Page 26

3 Bathroom designer Marie Striewe: Three sample plans for barrier-free bathrooms  ............ Page 28

Instead of tiles: Changing the wallpaper in the bathroom ...................... Page 36

4 “I live in a balloon on a phone box”: Bloon occupies the smallest niche .................................. Page 38

Industrial quality: Quality is attitude  ................................. Page 44

Student project container: The showroom in a box ..................................................... Page 48

Trade fair dates: TECE close to you ................................. Page 49

Index

Information

Close to you is a magazine produced by TECE GmbH Hollefeldstrasse 5748282 Emsdetten, Germanywww.tece.de

Responsible in keeping with the German press laws (§ 55, section. 2 Interstate Broadcasting Treaty [RStV]): Hans-Joachim Sahlmann, TECE GmbH, Emsdetten, Germany

Concept, editing and graphic design: id pool GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany, www.id-pool.de

Cover picture: Alexandre Zveiger / istockphoto.com

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01Hans-Joachim Sahlmann

Sound insulation: the view behind the standard

When our editorial staff was looking to make contact with sound insulation inspectors for building construction, one thing quickly became clear: they have just as much to do as tradespeople. Noise is a huge topic in this republic, it re-duces property values, makes people sick. And when a building is constructed, sound insulation is a central topic these days when it comes to quality of life.

We take a look at the work not just of sound insulation evaluators, but also behind the relevance of the standard: what makes ears and hearing so special, and after reading the article, so especially fascinating too? The precision of the ear, its specialisation and its evolutionary conditioning are as important as our sense of sight on closer inspection. The difference: we have no “ear lids” and our hearing can’t be switched off. That doesn’t make it better. Our trade has a central responsibility when it comes to the subject of sound insulation in building construction. We don’t just want to make you aware of this – we want to convince you.

I was impressed by the ideas of the Munich based professor, Horst Wildemann. He explains to us how industrial manufacturing can help reduce construction costs by 70% – in the future. It doesn’t have to be maybe – but one thing remains: if the shortage of specialist workers in construction is our most pressing problem right now, then this professor from the automotive industry has an answer for us.

We hope you find this edition an interesting and stimulating read.

Statement

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Sound – the effect on body and mind

It’s not just the dose that makes the poison

The Swiss physician Paracelsus knew it: “All substances are poisons, there is none which is not a poison; the dose makes the poison.” This is also true for acoustics. The ears are unlike any of the other sensory organs in terms of their outstanding senso-ry quality – not even the eyes. Behind the organ lies the assessment of the informa-tion heard – and abysses of psychology lie in wait.

The question arises: if you had the inevitable choice of being born blind or deaf, what would you choose? An-swering spontaneously, many want to retain their eyesight. The great think-er Immanuel Kant decided differently. For him, sight establishes contact with things; but through hearing we find contact with people. But at some point it flips around: then the sounds that we use to orient

ourselves become something unde-sired. The noise here doesn’t have to be loud. A mosquito doesn’t even hit 10 dB(A) on a sound level meter. And yet all of us have been dragged out of our sleep at least once by the sound of this kind of bloodsucker. Whatever enters our hearing system via the ears is fed by a nerve to the brain where it is interpreted – around the clock.

AEROPLANE

WAVES

WAVES

AEROPLANEECHO

BIRDS WIND

BARBECUE

BARBECUE

BARBECUE

BIRDS

BIRDS

WAVES

WINDWIND

BARBECUE

STREET

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Evolution has conditioned us so that our hearing works even while we sleep at night, otherwise all our ancestors would have been killed by wild animals in their day.

The German term for noise – “Lärm” – comes from the Roman linguistic sphere (all’arme) and means “to arms!”. “Lärm” is a sound that warns or stresses. It penetrates our sub-conscious, where it aff ects the body and causes hormonal responses. There is no habit. The tales of railway residents who have long since gotten used to the sound of goods trains rat-tling past are considered by experts to be purely self-serving assertions.

Health and economic damage caused by noise

“Noises are the sounds of others”, says Tucholsky, the old suff erer of noise. The noise of traffi c, noise in the workplace, noise in the home, noise in your free time and in the neighbourhood: noise annoys, nega-tively impacts quality of life, reduces property values and causes illness.

Taking traffi c noise as an example: more than half of Germans feel harassed by noise in their place of

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residence. And noisy living conditions negatively impact a person’s living situation: according to a meta-study by the Federal Environmental Agen-cy, around three percent of all heart attacks in Germany are triggered by the noise of street traffi c. Kerstin Giering, professor at Trier University, calculated costs of around €1.8 billion per year just for heart attacks related to traffi c noise. Added to this is the economic damage: sickness times, property value loss, sales losses in tourism, etc. The costs for the com-munity in Germany apparently come to €9.1 billion per year – and that’s just for traffi c noise.

When it comes to cars, quiet inside/loud outside is the mantra of many petrol heads and journalist vehicle testers: noise is the sound of others, after all. On the one hand, we have sources of noise – whether it’s leaf blowers, children playing or the aforementioned petrol heads. On the other hand, we have those aff ected by noise, reasonably insulated be-hind sound-insulated walls, sound-in-sulated windows and sound-insulated homes. We’re talking about billions invested in sound insulation, interfer-ence in the landscape by wall and partitions – and at the same time the lust for the sound of exhausts and bass speakers.

Kurt Tucholsky once cried: “Oh Lord, give us ear lids!” The list of intellec-tuals who felt negatively impacted by noise in a similar way to Tucholsky is long: Kafk a, Proust and Schopen-hauer complained in a literary fashion about noise, the Scottish historian even had a soundproof workroom built, the cock ended up in Kant’s soup bowl – because of it’s crowing. Intellectual analysis, thought and concentration – all of this requires silence.

Whether it’s in the home, nature or in the city: it’s defi nitely not easy to

insulate yourself from the sound of others because sound uses air as well as water and solid materials as a transport medium. While a con-crete wall works as a solid resistor to airborne sound, structural sound can only be partially escaped via decou-pling from fi xed structures.

Sound is personal – and physical

Psychoacoustics is what follows the reception of sound. The analysis and interpretation of the sound by

the brain: nothing is more personal than sensing and judging a sound. What is one person’s favourite music is another person’s bass-dulled rumbling. This is exactly what hap-pens in a neighbouring apartment because the bass is transmitted as structural sound, whereby chords and harmonies have long since been insulated out.

Alongside emotional infl uences in hearing the sound, the physical measurement of noise is as problem-atic and political as the problem itself. The sound pressure level is measured in decibels, a logarithmic scale

Sound – the eff ect on body and mind

Hit on the ear

Airbag

Howler monkey (loudest landanimal)

Jet plane

Pain threshold

Goods train

Motorcycle (accelerating rapidly)

Street traffi c

Frogs croaking

Talking

Mosquitos

170 dB

160 dB

140 dB

130 dB

120 dB

110 dB

100 dB

80 dB

65 dB

60 dB

10 dB

So loud...

1 Soundscape of a landscape by the sea. The interplay of all sound sources is its unique acoustic fi ngerprint.

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Sound – the effect on body and mind

based on three different filters (A, B and C). “Logarithm” is a term fleetingly remembered from high school for most people: there are “only” six decibels (dB) between 60 and 66, but the noise doubles for every six decibels measured. Assess-ments are being conducted around the world more and more in dB(A). The pope of audio, lecturer and sound engineer Eberhard Senpiel, who died in 2014, felt this was the wrong path: “You can’t expect any accurate description of sound levels from dB(A) measurements.” The reason: dB(A) filters out the important frequencies (especially loud sounds and the bass levels) and is thus a scale that favours noise emitters and silences noise sufferers. That’s why it’s also used in traffic. Here the following applies: the reality is much louder than the measured value!

Architecture and nature create soundscapes

We live in an extremely loud age. Compared to the time before the Industrial Revolution, researchers are consequently looking at potencies for sound level increase. R. Murray Schafer, the Canadian sound re-searcher and inventor of the sound landscape construct (soundscapes) speaks on the pre-industrial world of a hi-fi soundscape in which “a ben-eficial relationship between signal and sound” prevails and “individual sounds become audible because the level of environmental sounds is low”.

Soundscapes are the acoustic finger-prints of a landscape or a space and

play an increasing role in architecture and spatial planning. This is because certain spaces are linked to a certain acoustic – like mosquitos with a sting. A subway station has a different soundscape to a bathroom. Thus the acoustic feeling of “bathroom” is characterised by the hard wall and floor coverings, which provide perceptible reflections, but also by the sanitary fittings connected with flowing liquid and dripping sounds. And the bathroom “soundscape” propagates outward in unfavourable circumstances – through the wall, into adjoining spaces and other homes. It’s totally different there – and yet still the bathroom.

The architect Olaf Schäfer is a spe-cialist in soundscapes. His “Studio Urban Resonance” illuminates (or better sounds out) the subject of soundscapes in architecture. Unlike noise, the graduate engineer defines the positive side of acoustics – as a type of sound designer for spaces. “We think of architecture and city planning starting with the acoustics.” This works for stations as well as river banks: “We had a project on the Spree river to reanimate it acous-tically so that the river, which flows between solid concrete banks, can be perceived by the ears as natural once more.”

2 Soundscapes are defined in the home too and influence residents’ health. The choice of technical devices has a decisive influence here.

Wax earplugs

Ear defenders

In-ear hearing protectors

Sound-insulated wall

Normal window

Sound-insulated window

Pre-wall installationwith blown-in insulation

-27 dB

-35 dB

-37 dB

-20 dB

-29 dB

-40 dB

-30 dB

So quiet...

REFRIGERATOR

KITCHEN DEVICES

DISHWASHER & SINK

RESIDENTS GARAGE

AIR CONDITIONING

WASHING MACHINE & DRYER

ENTERTAINMENTELECTRONICS

BATHROOM

HEATING SYSTEM

VACUUM CLEANERSTREET NOISE

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Soundscapes in the home infl uence body and mind

And how about small spaces like the bathroom? How does the special-ist judge this microcosm for body cleansing? “There’s certainly still lots of room to play with the design – in the end everything depends on the expected use.” Everything that forms part of the convoluted noise of the bathroom is fed into his soundscape model: fl ush plates on the toilet fl ush and fi ttings, shower head and shower fl oor – fl owing sounds. Even singing in the shower. “It’s about developing

an acoustic design.” Hand showers can contribute here that don’t crackle but spray lightly like a can of deo-dorant. This can also include sounds in the intimate area of the bathroom such as the sound of a fully closing door, which conveys security. “And not least: cleanliness and clarity are the fundamental promise of the bathroom – maybe you can open up the space in a natural setting too and let nature in.” Finally, this leaves the question: do spaces sound the way they’ve become or should they fulfi l completely diff erent acoustic promis-es? Was the bathroom born from the wet room, a narrow acoustic relative to the equally tiled slaughter house? Is the bathroom too loud to be a

place of retreat? The World Health Organisation (WHO) classifi es noise as the second largest environmen-tal factor increasing the burden of disease – after air pollution. Retreats must be created that reduce this burden of disease. The expectation of a home is protection from external sounds and those coming from the neighbourhood – as well as a min-imum of reliability in admitting little noise as well as emitting little noise. In the age of compressed living space, this is a challenge – we’re still on track to reach ten billion citizens of Earth and the tighter it gets, the more important sound insulation becomes.

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0.04° 3.5 nanometres

Hair cellsAuditory nerve

Basilar membrane

A hair curvedIn the cochlea, pressure fl uctuations (sound) are turned into vibrations of the hair cells. The length of the hair cells determines the sensitivity to diff erent sound frequencies so that the ear can distinguish between diff erent pitch tones. Quiet tones are perceived at a deviation in the hair cells of just 0.04°. This corresponds to some 3.5 nanometres or 35x the diameter of a hydrogen atom.

Hearing experiments

60% of people over 70 years old wear a hearing aid.

“ Not seeing separates us from things. Not hearing separates us from people.”

– Immanuel Kant

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The human ear

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Is it the bear – or his echo?If the same sound signal reaches a hearer with a time delay from several diff erent directions, the hearer only perceives the direction of the fi rst sound signal to arrive – the fi rst wave front. Thus Stone Age man in his cave also knew immediately where the grim growling of the bear was coming from – and didn’t somehow run from its echo. Who wants to run into a bear, after all?

Blind cow: directional hearingThe interaural time diff erence (ITD) is the time it takes between the sound reaching the ear facing the sound source and reaching the ear facing away from the sound source. It is very important in establishing the direction of sound sources. The brain can distinguish time diff erences from 10 μs. The sound travels 3 mm during this time!

ITD

When the evaluator moves inLots of complaints are made about insufficient sound insulation in buildings – people want their peace and quiet. In most cases, this ends up in the expert being called, who then arrives with his instruments.

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Helmut Gerlinger is CEO of the engineering company Gerlinger + Merkle in Schorndorf near Stuttgart. Their speciality: sound insulation and building physics. The graduate engineer and his colleagues measure sound and investigate the pathways that it takes. One challenge in sound

measurement is the reproducible generation of sound. This is rela-tively simple with a toilet flush in the adjoining room because the flush is always possible to reproduce at the same loudness. It’s tougher with the sound of footfall: there is no standard person with standard high heels that

takes standard steps through the home. It’s significantly more prac-tical to use the so-called standard hammer mill, which has become the evaluator’s standard tool. Here, five hammers weighing 0.5 kg strike ten times per second to generate an unmistakable sound event.

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Sound insulation in construction

1 Helmut Gerlinger with a loudspeaker for sound insulation measurements. But instead of music here, there is white noise coming from the generator.

2 Standard hammer mill for footfall measurements: weight and impact frequency are perfectly set so that there is a precisely defined sound event for the measurements.

3 Sound generator, evaluation instrument and precision microphone for mobile use.

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When investigating the transmission of sound through the air, a meas-urement loudspeaker is set up as a defined sound source that generates white noise in the range of hear-ing frequencies from 50 to 5,000 Hz, which equates to 6.5 octaves. Measurements are then performed on both sides of the testing item to determine sound level differences. Here, the evaluator uses sound level measuring devices gauged for this that belong to class 1, which corre-sponds to a measurement accuracy of less than 0.7 dB. Depending on the spatial geometry, the measurement values are further corrected and compared with the guide values. If these are exceeded, there is a fault.

The next step is interpreting the measurement results. One reason for faults could be bridges for struc-ture-borne noise, such as walls to which sanitary items are attached being too thin. Above all, however,

the art of building design reduces the probability of faults, says Gerlinger: “Thus with primary walls in the area of water installations, for example, the threat of bridges for structure-borne sound is quite high.” The experts can occasionally already see from the measurement curves what types of mistakes have been made. But whether these were caused by the tiler or the person laying the screed can normally only be determined once the edge joints have been opened. If there are bridges for structure-borne noises in the sani-tary system, it’s usually necessary to open up structural components. Then a mini-camera, an endoscope, can be used to inspect the inside of the pre-wall installation to check whether the installer correctly insulated the pipelines attachments against sound.

As a publicly appointed and sworn expert, Gerlinger is usually commis-sioned by district and state courts.

He is often also engaged by private individuals, local authorities, con-struction developers and tradespeo-ple who call the engineering office as a sound insulation inspection body.

The time and expertise cost money, of course: a measurement of footfall insulation with evaluation, measure-ment report and brief analysis to DIN 4109 can be obtained for just shy of a thousand euros without additional costs. Larger projects are accordingly more expensive. So it’s always worth thinking ahead of time about sound insulation and making solid plans. However, Gerlinger is convinced: he won’t be short of clients.

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Sound insulation and fire protection

Please blow into this as hard as you can...Fire protection and sound insulation reimagined: the partitioning of fire protection installation systems across the floor is an inescapable obligation in housing technology. It is, however, time-consuming and often blocks qualified personnel. There is now an attractive alternative for pre-wall installations with blown-in insulation.

With machine-based blown-in insula-tion technology, aka cavity wall insu-lation (or CWI technology), a powerful fan pushes flocks of rock wool into the building cavities. The process was first used in building insulation around 50 years ago. It was primarily used for filling cavities with complex geometries. When extending a loft, for example, it saves on the effort of cutting rock wool mats. Additionally, the later use of material that leads to the degradation of the insulating ef-fect is avoided due to the solid pack-ing. Further classic examples of use

are the insulation of cellar ceilings or the filling of doubled facades.

CWI technology is based on the exact knowledge of the volume to be filled. The desired thickness of the finished insulation can be used to precisely calculate the amount of flocked rock wool granulate required. Once this is inserted into the cavity, you can assume the cavity has been completely filled with the desired consistency. One advantage of this insulation process is the material pro-perty of the rock wool during fires.

1 To start with, the internal volume is calculated by analysing the plans – in this instance, the test wall at the Fraunhofer Institut in Stuttgart for the sound insulation measurements.

2 The rock wool is blown into the sanitary wall via a lance using air pressure. The specialist CWI compa-ny drills holes at multiple sites in the panel facing here to achieve even and solid filling of the entire sanitary wall.

3 View from a smartphone into the half-filled sanitary wall via one of the openings.

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Unlike today’s widely spread insu-lation with polystyrene, this material does not represent an additional fire load in the building.

Still very new: flocks in sanitation

With CWI technology, even room-height installation walls or shafts can be insulated to standards. This means classified ceiling partition systems for fire protection can be done away with. This makes installation signif-icantly easier since the framework conditions for usability certificates for different ceiling partition systems are irrelevant. To put it plainly: the

tightly packed filling would still stand securely in place if the plasterboards fell off in the event of a fire. This ensures that fire and smoke cannot spread across the ceiling between floors and that it therefore conforms to the law in regards to the Model Building Regulations [MBO] (Sec. 14 MBO 2016).

In sanitary wall installations, the specialist CWI company assumes the final responsibility for fire pro-tection technology – it also pro-vides consultation on the concrete, specialist implementation for the project. This means the tradesman can concentrate on their core com-petency, the installation of housing technology.

Sound insulation delivered

The finished insulation is compact and not only meets fire protection requirements – as could be prov-en in an individual case – but also the structural legal requirements of advanced sound insulation in ac-cordance with DIN 4109 and private legal sound insulation for SSTI-III in accordance with VDI 4100. Compre-hensive sound insulation inspections of pre-wall installations in front of light dry-walls were carried out by the Stuttgart based Fraunhofer Institut for this solution. Here, among other things, the installation sounds from the sanitary installation to adjoining

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Sound insulation and fire protection

4 Before filling the pre-wall con-struction, a test is carried out with a test body made of sheet metal. Weighing is used to check whether the suitable packing density can be achieved with the granulate under building site conditions.

5 Simulation of the sounds of a shower bath in a floor-level shower. The sound transmitted is carefully measured in the adjoining room.

6 The measurements at the Fraun-hofer Institut in Stuttgart have confirmed that the sanitary walls have outstanding sound insulation properties thanks to cavity wall insulation.

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rooms were tested in accordance with DIN 4109 and VDI 4100.

A welcome side-effect that saves on the time-consuming insulation of individual pipes in the sanitary wall is the thermic decoupling of cold and warm areas in a joint use installa-tion shaft or in pre-wall installation: thermic decoupling via CWI tech-nology can prevent cold water from warming up during stagnation in breach of the Drinking Water Ordi-nance – a significant contribution to potable water hygiene. The results of a comprehensive series of tests are available at MFPA Leipzig for this. The special charm of the solution is the combination of the delegation of a less attractive partial construction including liability risk to specialists with a simultaneously increased qual-ity standard. And with a diverse range of benefits.

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Modular construction and industrial prefabrication

Professor Horst Wildemann is considered to be one of the fathers of the success story that is the automo-tive industry. Now he’s putting construction under the magnifying glass. His theory: modular construction methods and industrial manufacturing can reduce construction costs by up to 70 percent because con-struction is fallow ground when it comes to process optimisation. A visit to his Munich Think Tank.

17Construction 4.0 comes from the factory

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Individual craftsmanship and manufacture will exist for as long as there are customers with special re-quests willing and able to pay. When it comes to the building industry, however, the questions arises as to whether everyone can or wants to use such methods. Professor Horst Wildemann, head of the Trans-fer-Centrums für Produktions-Logistik und Technologie-Management (TCW) in Munich is currently transferring expertise from the automotive

industry to the construction industry, with which he wants to catapult a pre-industrial phase to the status of industry 4.0.

Cars and machines have been produced in modular construction to individual customer requirements for decades already. Wildemann is now transferring this principle to housing construction. Four tasks must be solved:

• Modular development: houses are split into modules such as walls, doors, fl oors, sanitary and electron-ic installations. The modules are off ered in multiple versions but are always compatible in their interfac-es to other modules.

1 Home construction 4.0: Horst Wildemann in his element of the processes. Here the individual house part is loaded onto the truck.

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• Industrial module manufacturing: streamlining, automation and digiti-sation ensure gains in productivity and quality and thus a signifi cant cost reduction.

• Planning with the confi gurator: the clients put the modules together online to build their dream house. They can immediately see every change including costs directly on their screen. If the project is approved, the confi gurator produc-es plans and data for authorities, production and assembly on site.

• Once the foundation is erected, the assembly of an apartment or a house takes no more than a few days.

The decisive savings are achieved on the construction site. The trans-fer of all manufacturing processes in controllable production condi-tions reduces errors and increases quality. This means less reworking on the construction site and short-er manufacturing times. The high industrialisation of processes allows the success triangle of quality, costs and time to be infl uenced such that a cost reduction of 50-70% should be achieved compared to conventional construction.

Horst WildemannProfessor Dr Dr h.c. mult., Dr -Ing E.h.

Horst Wildemann studied machine construction in Aachen and Cologne (Diploma Engineering) and business administration (Diploma Salesman) He is the most notable promoter of the Kanban production philosophy in the German-speaking world and in his research has devel-oped new approaches for industrial modular construction methods, primarily in the automotive industry. After many years of practical work as an engineer in the automotive industry, in 1974 he graduated to become Dr rer. pol. He qualified at Cologne University in 1980. Since 1980, he has been teaching as a professor of business administra-tion at Bayreuth University, Passau, and at Munich Technical University since 1989. In addition to his teach-ing position, Prof. Wildemann chairs a consulting institute for company planning and logistics with over 60 employees. In 40 books and over 700 essays that have been pro-duced in close contact with practi-cal work, he has demonstrated new pathways for the economic shaping of a company with a future.

This is similar to a prefabricated house – just as an individual unit from the fl atbed truck.”

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Psychology is the problem – not the technology

So far, there has been no lack of attempts at standardisation, whereby prefabricated houses in particular don’t enjoy a good image every-where – to say nothing at all of pre-fabricated slab buildings. In addition to a certain degree of blinkered thinking in the construction sector, Wildemann sees these as the main obstacles for industrial construction in Germany. Technical challenges aren’t the problem because the necessary manufacturing technologies already exist.

Japan and the USA are currently the leaders in modular construction. Years ago, Toyota took its production system from automotive construction as the model for building residential buildings in series. But these build-ings aren’t suitable for the European market because unit constructions aren’t accepted here.

The US prefab housing provider Blu Homes does things diff erently. For three years now, clients can put their dream home together individually using the online confi gurator. But Blu Homes doesn’t produce its models to the industry standard and is therefore hardly more economical then stand-ard prefabricated housing providers.

The Federal Association Deutscher Fertigbau has calculated an average market share of 25 percent for 2015,

Modular construction and industrial prefabrication

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Modular construction and industrial prefabrication

and the trend is upwards. If the demand forecasts by the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Aff airs and Spatial Devel-opment are to be believed, then 350,000 to 400,000 housing units will be required each year up to

2030. This cannot be achieved with current capacities in the building trade and associated construction trades.

There is a lot of potential in adding to existing homes. A study has shown

that the living area in cities could be increased by a fi fth in this way. These kinds of projects could be carried out in just a few days with industrial prefabrication.

One thing that is essential for indus-trial manufacturing is BIM – Building Information Modelling. This allows the integration of all processes across the entire life cycle of a building such as in the product confi gurator, with the quality gates in production, when putting together modules on the construction site and in the monitor-ing and management of the entire value creation process. The activi-ties of the architects and planners would remain the same, with modular home construction only the rules of the game would change in that the trades would receive a type of plan-ning module.

Construction 4.0 reduces the number of errors

Alongside the architectural house and the prefabricated house, industri-al construction will thus in future off er an additional pathway to an individual house, whereby even a conversion should run comparatively easily if the requirements of the house change. In Wildemann’s view, traditional trades profi t from the industrial construction method. They can off er their services throughout a precise process plan and elevate them to a new level of quality. Contrary to conventional housing construction, in modular

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Pioneer of the idea ofindustrial construction“I see the core problem of construction in our time in the industrialisation of the construction industry”, says Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – in 1924. A lot has defi nitely changed since then – but construction is still in many cases an individual work of craftsmanship, despite prefabrication, modular construction and prefabricated housing. Far diff erent to what the great architects of the modern age predicted.

They recognised that only industrial manufacturing of all parts allows the true stream-lining of the fabrication process. The work on the construction site would then only have the character of assembly and “be able to be reduced to an unexpectedly short time”. This, says Mies, will result in a signifi cant reduction in construction costs: “It is clear to me that this will destroy the construction industry as it exists in its current form; but whomsoever would lament that the home of the future can no longer be constructed by building workers might also consider that the automobile, too, is no longer manufactured by the cartwright.”

Ludwig Mies’ idea of industrial construction may have come a step closer to reality with the invention of the 3D printer: in 2017, in the French city of Nantes, a 92 m2 single family house was constructed from expanding foam and a printable concrete material with a standard industrial robot that functioned here as a 3D printer.

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housing construction all trades are centrally coordinated under one roof and under controllable produc-tion conditions. Better control and greater transparency thus reduce the

frequency of errors, which is still very high in conventional construction. However, this requires understanding of standardised interfaces and the benefits of industrial manufacturing.

2 Prefabricated sanitary walls: set up and connect, it can be that easy.

3 Process-fit: just-in-time delivery to the construction site.

Time comparison: Planning and assembly

Project Organisation and Planning Assembly Panel facing

TECEsystem

Sanitary &

Dry-wall construction

Time saving 50%

Investment sum

standard assembly

on site

TECEsystemAdded costs 6.5% (compared to thecheapest quotation)

Average price

cheapest quotation

Renovating with prefabrication: advantages outweigh the costs

A first step towards industrial construction is the industrial prefabri-cation of sanitary walls and shafts such as TECE has been offering for around 20 years. With the smaller project of 48 residential units calculated here, the halving of the construction time was offset by added costs at the time of quotation of around 6.5%. Quality and process advantages (fewer complaints) play a part later on in cost terms, however, and are not yet taken into account.

* Experience values demonstrate an average time saving of around one third on the construc-tion site. Rule of thumb: the larger the property, the more uniform the pre-walls and the more fixtures (fresh water stations, etc.), so the more economical the industrial prefabrication is.

Engineers and construction com-panies must learn to exploit these advantages for themselves.

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Time is money - especially in hotel construction. Industrially pre- assembled sanitary walls are the crucial lever here for speeding up construction processes bathrooms. With the Nordport Plaza Hotel in Hamburg, a dash of cleverness was involved as well: it was planned so that each sanitary wall functions as a room divider and can operate two bathrooms simultaneously. Fire protection and sound insulation are blown in.

Hotel construction with perspective: two rooms, one element

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Prefabrication in a hotel

In the spring, the 4-star superior hotel was finished after a construction period of 24 months. It is located between the metropolitan region of Hamburg and the business location of Norderstedt, and offers a direct view of the take-off and landing strip at Hamburg Airport. The hotel com-bines modern architecture with the flair of the 1960s, which is reflected in the furniture and in retro photographs of air travel motifs. The hotel complex is comprised of the 10-storey elliptical Terminal 1, which is connected to the 4-storey Terminal 2 by a glass gang-way. The hotel contains 188 generous rooms and suites, a restaurant with 200 seats and a conference centre with 500 seats.

In order to optimise the construction process and thus allow a shorter construction period, the investor Premero Immobilien GmbH opted to use industrially prefabricated sanitary walls from TECE. These registers are specially tailored to the installation situation and are completely preas-sembled for potable water, heating, drainage and ventilation. This took into account the requirements for sound insulation and fire protection. The TECEsystem package comprises an all-round service from consul-tation to planning the system and right up to instruction of the on-site contractors.

Sound insulation is especially important in a hotel

One sanitary wall was placed be-tween the rooms for two bathrooms - the conception not only goes faster but also saves space. However, special importance has to be given to the sound insulation here because the registers serve as a dividing wall: Christian Pohl from project field sales managed the project on the behalf of TECE and for this reason brought machined blown-in insulation into

1 Two birds with one stone: the housing technology register serves as a dividing wall between two bathrooms. A toilet, shower and wash-stand are then later connected on both sides.

2 New hotel construc-tion in Hamburg: the Nordport Plaza Hotel was planned intelligently – this saved time and reduced the costs. (Photo: Nordport Plaza)

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Prefabrication in a hotel

play, which has demonstrated good sound insulation values thanks to the cavity-free insertion. Cavities in the pre-walls cause resonance ef-fects: these are filled out with blown-in insulation in order to dampen the transmission of sound.

Guaranteed delivery schedulejust in time The coordination process for this hotel project was implemented in a typically ideal manner for a new build of this complexity and size. After a precise needs assessment for the

hotel bathrooms came the concept drafting phase: walls and shafts were planned digitally on the screen and can then be manufactured from the complete data set in the factory. In the process, the hydraulics, compli-ance with potable water hygiene as well as the sound insulation and fire protection are automatically taken into consideration. The concept draft formed the basis for the production of prototypes that were presented to representatives from the investor, specialist planners, the ventilation technician and experts for the blown-in insulation.

Following approval of the concept, TECE was able to draw up the ser-vice description for the invitation to tender. Following award of the con-tract came the extensive detail plan-ning. This included both the creation of the final pipe network plans and manufacturing drawings of all sanitary walls for every bathroom, the floor plans and vertical sections as well as the determination of the delivery schedule, including the respective release quantities for the just-in-time delivery of the registers to the con-struction site. In projects of this scale, this ensures that the registers arrive on site and in place on time to be directly installed.

3 The prefabricated sanitary walls are delivered to the construction site pre-piped and just have to be fixed and connected.

4 Information is everything: using a prototype of a sanitary wall, the construction participants are guided through the planning concept.

5 The pre-wall is installed and panelled between both bathrooms of two rooms – sound insulation and fire protection are provided by individually calculated blown-in insulation.

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New concept: blown-in insulation

In the TECE factory, the registers are prefabricated with industrial pre-cision. Joins and connections are checked – the manufacturer assumes the guarantee for this. The prefabri-cated walls are then supplied to the construction site to be connected. Following delivery to the construction site, the TECEsystem sanitary walls were placed in their rightful locations as per the labelling and attached to the building shell with sound-proofing elements. Once the pipelines were connected, the register walls were panelled.

The specialist company responsible for the blown-in insulation used the internal volume of the sanitary walls to calculate the amount of insulation required, which was blown into the panel facing by machine via multiple openings, leaving no cavity. The end result is thus the required thickness and solidity for sustainably secure filling. Finally, following installation, a certificate confirms the proper

effectiveness of the sound insulation measures using blown-in insulation technology. Christian Pohl: “Classic sound-proofing takes a lot of time, however, and often blocks qualified personnel who could complete more profitable work. For projects with a tight schedule such as this one, blown-in insulation by a specialist service provider is more economical and also easier.”

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Water consumption in fi gures

“ The origin of all things is water.”

Thales of Miletus Greek philosopher, approx. 600 BC

Watervirtual

Of this,3.5% is fresh water, locked in ice, ground-water, lakes and rivers, in the atmosphere, in the ground and in creatures

The rest is96.5% salt water,as sea water or salt lake water.

“ The origin of all things is water.

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70%of the Earth’s surface is

covered with water

Water is the most important foodstuff – it should be used sparingly. So far, so good: when it comes to the careful handling of raw materials, saving water is a unique model for success – in Germany at least. And there’s no need, because Germany has more than enough potable water: if water is eagerly saved, then “virtual water” is largely forgotten. This is often imported – from areas that need the real water consumed for this much more.

How is this calculated?Virtual water is more than the amount of fl uid in a tomato. Added to this is rainwater ( 1 ), irrigation water ( 2 ) and all the grey water ( 3 ) used to e.g. neutralise fertilisers. A holistic consideration puts in particular those products manufactured in and imported from regions of water scar-city in a whole new light. Not only tomatoes, but also e.g. cotton t-shirts. This water export is for instance blamed for the fact that the Aral Sea in Central Asia has since been all but dried up by cotton fi elds.

How much water is there and where?You don’t see it, but it’s there nonetheless: a cup of coff ee contains 125 millilitres of water from the tap and 140 litres of virtual water that was consumed in the cultivation and production of those brown beans.

1 rose

5litres

32litres

140litres

1 microchip (2 g) 1 cup of coff ee 1 litre of cow’s milk 1 laptop computer 1 mid-range car

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1,000Litres

20,000litres

300,000 litres An example calculation for

1 kg tomatoes:

22 litres of rainwater+ 5 litres of irrigation water+ 8 litres of grey water

35 litres of virtual water

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Bathroom workroom

Future market with a disabilityForecasts are tough – especially when they concern the future. But the future is predestined in some sectors: in Germany alone, 7 million bathrooms will need to be built or retrofitted by the year 2030 to become age- appropriate. This need is real – and it’s huge. The Hamburg based bathroom designer Marie Striewe is familiar with the projections. She is a TÜV-certified specialised designer for age-appropriate bathrooms and knows how the bathroom can do justice to users’ personal disabilities and changing requirements.

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Age-appropriate conversion/con-struction means enabling people to live independently and on their own terms – at every age. But just as personal disabilities can’t be stand-ardised, so there are entirely different requirements for the barrier-free

bathroom: planning specialist Marie Striewe shows how age-appropriate, wheelchair-accessible and visual handicap-appropriate planning in the bathroom differs. One floor plan, three barrier-free bathrooms – planned completely differently.

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Bathroom workroom

We all age. This influences our needs – especially at home. The bathroom is a total problem zone here. An age-appropriate bathroom has to be functional – and in the process is no longer sterile or resembles a care home; two negative associa-tions that the keyword “barrier-free” has outgrown today. In principle, an

age-appropriate bathroom is nothing other than a generously designed area where you enjoy spending time and in which people with physical disabilities also feel well and safe, can wash independently and where necessary, shower or bathe with someone to assist. So it’s about living comfort, a topic that younger genera-

tions naturally also appreciate. That’s why renovations should be planned and supplied with perspective so that they can meet requirements that change with age. In an ideal scenar-io, this saves having to move into a retirement or care home. That’s be-cause the bathroom is the neuralgic point of the home.

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The bathroom for seniors

easy entry

Safety support arm

Shower seat

Parking area

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There are precautionary measures that can be taken here that don’t constitute an added expense: for example, panelling the walls with OSB boards to prepare them for the assembly of safety support arms and shower seats. The age-appropriate bathroom does away with thresholds and height differences as much as possible in order to avoid stumbling into the shower area. A pleasant side-effect: the bathroom appears more spacious and thus feels more comfortable. Wider accesses and suf-ficient room for movement minimise the danger of impacts and maximise freedom of movement.

With the help of pre-wall technolo-gy, seating and parking areas can be easily created around the bath

tub and shower. Wide parking areas around the washstand also serve for supporting and holding on. All fittings should be designed as single-lever mixers because they can be operat-ed more easily and more intuitively then dual-grip fittings. Sharp edges should be avoided due to the danger of injuries. Shower toilets are very popular in elderly care and are also perfectly suited for the private bath-room. Preparative measures can be easily hidden in the pre-wall – TECE, for example, offers cisterns with uni-versal connections.

1 Comfort through spaciousness: in carefully planned bathrooms, every age group feels well.

2 Stumbles should be avoided at all costs. Wide accesses reduce the risk of taking a knock.

3 Lots of seating space and wide parking areas for supports can be integrated into the architecture thanks to pre-wall technology.

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seamless and wide

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Taking the wheelchair into the bathroom

“Planning for a bathroom in the private sector that is suitable for wheelchairs is a big challenge”, says Marie Striewe. Every centimetre counts because you can only use a bathroom unre-stricted if it has a minimum floor area to begin with. DIN 18040-2 defines wide accesses and sufficient room for movement for this: in order to be able to even drive a standard wheel-chair through the door, the standard requires a clear door width of 90 cm. In order to close it from inside without having to navigate back and forth,

Bathroom workroom

the door must not enter into the bathroom – this means it can also be opened in an emergency if someone collapses in front of the door.

In order to manoeuvre freely be-tween the sanitary objects with no problems, a minimum movement area of at least 150 x 150 cm is required. The increased area of the floor-level shower must be just as big, which must also be fitted with a seating area. The washstand should be flat and allow movement underneath. For bathroom furniture this gener-ally means that they only have to be planned on one side in order to ensure the necessary leg clearance.

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possible to move beneath

Backrest

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4 Backrest on the toilet for an optimum seating posture and a washstand area with movement clearance underneath and fitted with tiltable mirrors.

5 Sufficient seating space and hand-rails are part of the bath tub and shower areas.

6 Every centimetre counts in planning in order to provide sufficient ma-noeuvring space in front of all areas.

There is no prescribed height for assembly, it should simply be carried out according to individual require-ments. In normal bathrooms, the guide value is 85 to 95 cm, which may generally be too high for wheel-chair users – 80 cm is recommended here. The mirror should be assem-bled at seat height and connect directly to the washstand. An added advantage is tiltable mirrors that any user can rotate as their needs

require. Minimum distances should also be observed for the toilet: there must be a distance of 90 cm between the wall and the front edge of the toilet for a sideways transfer to the ceramic. The distance between the necessary safety support arms is a minimum of 65 cm. Safety support arms with integrated toilet roll holder are recommended. A backrest should also be fitted for an optimum seating posture.

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Manoeuvring areaSeating area

floor-level shower

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Bathroom workroom

“Visually impaired” refers to vision of less than 30%. According to the WHO, there are around 1.2 million visually impaired and blind people in Germany. A few simple measures are often enough to maintain the inde-pendence of those affected within their own four walls and reduce the risk of injury.

Colour contrasts are majorly crucial for orientation and probably the most

important feature of a bathroom that meets the needs of someone who is visually impaired. Fitting and oper-ating elements such as fittings or flush plates should stand out in sharp contrast from their environment. The same applies for handgrips, hand towel and toilet roll holders, bath-tub and shower seats all the way to accessories such as toothbrushes and hand towels. And to prevent slippage, it is recommended to use

7 Strong colour contrasts signal the bathroom setup to the visually impaired.

8 A slip-proof floor and high contrast floor marking help with orientation.

Vision-based disability

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Contrast

Orientation guides

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an anti-slip bath rug in a contrasting colour. The user with restricted vision can thus easily identify where they can stand safely. And self-help further helps people with this disability: fl oating objects in luminous colours are useful for identifying the water level in the bath tub and washstand - like the classic rubber ducky. The de-sired water level can be marked with a contrasting adhesive tape. Dispens-ers for soap and shampoo mounted on the walls in conspicuous colours are one tip to prevent accidental knocks. Removable, illuminated mag-nifying mirrors help with facial and bodily cleansing. The same applies to bathrooms for the visually impaired: avoid all defi ned edges.

Barrier-free building – without the barrier-free look

The future of construction is barrier-free – which can also be written with the term “universal design”. This means that spaces and products are freely accessible and comfortable to use for people of all age groups and in all living situa-tions. More and more solutions have built this quality in. Some examples make this clear.

The TECEdrainline shower channel (9) is a showcase product of universal design. It guarantees continuous bathroom fl oors without thresholds. TECElux (10) is another example: the toilet terminal is height-adjustable which is as great for back problems as it is for transferring from the wheelchair. High-contrast fl ush plates (11) are also easy to read for people with visual restrictions – and easy to operate. These are also a solution from universal design.

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Wallpaper instead of tiles

Bathroom design off the rollWallpaper in the bathroom? It sounds odd at first. But there are indeed suitable solutions – and they have a great deal to offer. We subjected an identical floor plan to a change of wallpaper that shows how the wall covering effects the style of living in the bathroom.

Bathrooms are renovated on aver-age every 20 years. Barely any living style survives that kind of timespan without becoming outdated at some point and appearing stale. Relics from overhauled living tastes are often slumbering behind bathroom doors – that can’t be tackled due to the high level of renovation required. Tiles aren’t entirely innocent here because a change in the wall covering causes noise, dirt and costs time. Tiles in col-ours that are no longer quite so taste-ful today are consequently preferably tolerated than struck off the wall. Wallpapers have no joints – and also have a whole host of advantag-es. Above all, however, they lower the renovation threshold. Naturally, moisture in the bathroom means not all wallpapers are suitable. Normal paper wallpapers would peel off with time. In the worst case, they would become completely soaked first, which can lead to an unnoticed build-up of mould behind the wallpaper. 1

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Fleece wallpapers, however, stand out with their resistance to water and permeability to steam, which they breathe out and thereby quickly dry out. A positive side-effect: tearing off wallpaper was yesterday. When it’s time to change the wallpaper or even the style, fleece wallpapers can be removed from the wallpaper with

zero effort. With the right accessories and colour-coordinated operating elements, a simple bathroom is quickly transformed into a baroque bathscape: the complete style change on the identical floor plan is impressive. And the housing tech-nology operating elements are the icing on the cake: thus e.g. toilet flush

1 Enjoy pomp? Jointless floral ornamentation is no problem with wallpaper. Just take a look at the toilet flush plate in a free selection of colours that integrates perfectly.

2 The same floor plan with an opulent lustre – a totally different effect. Changing the wallpaper makes it.

3 It comes in all shades and plenty of metallic surfaces: TECE flush plates.

plates from TECE can be ordered with various metallic surfaces or in the colour tones of your choice from the entire RAL and NCS palette. This thus unlocks completely new design freedom for the bathroom owner or bathroom designer down to the finest detail. No matter whether it’s pompous or avant-garde.

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Bloon: experimental living

Living in the bubbleHow can we create additional living space in the city? The artist and architect Agnes Brigida Giannone simply clamps a living bubble between two walls of a house. The residents reach the space via the telephone box beneath it that comes with integrated housing technology. The unusual construction project was the topic of an architecture seminar at the University of Bochum.

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The image of the bubble may be closely connected to certain associ-ations related to price developments in the property market, but the idea behind the Bloon project is meant entirely seriously. The project is intended to provide answers to the problems of the housing market in the university city of Bochum, where every seventh resident is a student. The students live largely in student apartment blocks outside of the inner city and close to the university.

Bringing student living back into the city

On the occasion of its 50th anniver-sary, the student union considered how the student life could be brought more into the inner city and thus turned to the University of Bochum’s specialist field of architecture to develop ideas for the student apart-ments of the future. Working under the condition that the students could implement a 1:1 model at the end of a draft seminar, the architect Agnes Giannone, the university’s lecturer for interior space, took on the challenge. The most interesting draft would then be selected following the seminar by a jury chaired by the architect and then implemented.

At the start of the project, questions were asked about how student living could look in an urban environment in the future: can seemingly unusable places be revived? Can something that already exists be reinterpreted?

Inspiration was provided e.g. by pneumatic installations from the late 1960s put together by architect and artist Hans Hollein, who anticipated the idea of dissolving spatial bounda-ries with a mobile office. His inflata-ble office made of plastic film with a telephone connection, which he set up in public places and used himself, was intended to enable temporary working in various locations. With this development, Hollein had already anticipated 50 years in advance the shift of the working world into the public sphere that is now part and parcel of modern life with digitisation.

A student further developed this idea as a living space. The “Luft-schloss”/“air castle” draft from David Keuer showed a pneumatic con-struction that is pressed between two house walls and can be reached via a staircase. The bubble con-tains wooden constructions that are intended to illustrate living functions such as kitchen, bathroom, sleeping and living space. This project was chosen unanimously by the jury for its practical implementation. And so the draft became the “Bloon” project. First, there was the problem of solv-ing how to get into the bubble.

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Bloon: experimental living

41

21 High up: the students working on installation of Bloon.

2 You can peek inside: impressions of the bubble by night.

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Bloon: experimental living

While looking for a replacement for the stairway construction, the students had the idea of using an old telephone box. With its dimensions of 1x1x2 metres, it seemed well suited as a transition from the public to the private – or more accurately, half- private, due to its transparency – and it could be equipped as a so-called housing technology centre, so as an entrance, stairwell, shower, toilet, airlock to the interior space and as a station for maintaining the pressure of the bubble.

Parallel to the project planning for the technology, the project team sought to make contacts in com-panies in the industry – not just for sponsoring purposes. TECE came into play when they were looking for a technical solution for the installation of a toilet in the telephone box. One student remembered the TECElux toilet terminal here, which is height- adjustable. The idea was to use this toilet as a type of “lift” up into the bubble. TECElux doesn’t provide a lift function, but crucial centimetres

that provide greater comfort when using the toilet. That’s why the design product was not used here. Never-theless, contact was made with the TECE project management team, which ended up being more than useful for the project.

Technical implementation with lots of snags

The first practical difficulties cropped up when hollowing out the telephone box, which namely lost its stability in the process. This was resolved by reinforcement with TECEprofil, the support frame system that was actually developed for sanitary walls and installation shafts. For this, the students had adjusted the section tubes within the phone box in their workshop and mounted them to a stable internal housing with the cor-responding corner joints and angle brackets. TECE was also able to con-tribute to drainage with a product for the shower using the TECEdrainline shower channel. In the end, however, a chemical solution was chosen for the toilet. A ladder provided access up into the airlock, because there’s a

3

3 Temporary supply and disposal technology in the telephone box.

4 Welcome to the bathroom: shower cabin with hand shower – next to it: ladder to the first floor.

5 Push to open: here is how you get to the first floor of the home.

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slight excess pressure in the bubble that naturally can’t be allowed to leak. The telephone box thus fulfils the most important basic needs of a res-ident in a home in terms of hygiene and the technical requirements for its operation.

The preparations for the living project took half a year, whereby the team received lots of support from various companies in the industry. In addition to the sanitary specialist TECE, who supplied the material for extending

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the telephone box and were there to provide support and advice with the construction, the company Pneumo-cell from Vienna carried out the con-struction and building of the bubble. Another sponsor was Akzo Nobel Decoration Paint and, more practi-cally, the carpentry company Fischer from Bochum as well as colleagues from the Chair of Structural Design helped the students out.

And how does such a living experi-ment feel in practice? Kim Stolfik, who

worked on the project as a student, provided a report of her experience: “Despite the transparency, I didn’t feel like I was on display – the atmos-phere felt more as if I was floating above everything”. In the evening, as the projections played on the surface of the bubble, some passers-by jumped up to touch the bubble. Only then did they notice that there were people inside. Once silence had returned, you could observe the stars undisturbed – almost as if you were under the open sky.

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Quality is an attitudeQuality in building services is one such matter: hardly any other product needs to last as long as pipes or fittings. After all, they disappear into the wall for 50 years. Did you know that a heating system operates for more hours of operation than a car over 300,000 kilometres? How is this quality produced? How is it ensured that the products keep such a promise? We spoke with Dr Jan Heine, head of Quality Management at TECE.

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Quality assurance - this is where people think about a calliper, which is used to compare the parts on the machine with the drawing. But quality management is more than that: it is a process that accompanies the product throughout its service life. It ranges from the market analysis (as an idea generator of product devel-opment) to the development itself, the procurement and production to the application at the customer’s location. At TECE, quality manage-ment begins at the very end – con-sistently in the work processes of tradespeople and the end customer’s expectations. “The market, and only the market, defines the quality expectation”, says Dr Heine.

Quality from the front to the backThe paradox is sometimes that the quality issues of a product are found at the very end, but often are caused at the very beginning: Jan Heine refers to the story with the “moose test”. At that time, a premium com-pact sedan began to fishtail during a chassis test in Sweden. In response to the moose test, various chassis components were consistently re-worked - the shortcoming during the moose test was therefore due to the development, not production. And the market discovered it - all the way at the end.

“Quality must be grappled with every day and every supervisor must take an oath to quality”, says the convinced quality man. The labora-

tory at the TECE head office is the heart of quality – this is where special procedures are used to determine whether the product will meet user expectations, standards and sets of rules as well as user safety. The laboratory performs checks while ac-companying development and is also a discussion platform: “This is where we struggle for the best solution. This is where ideas must be exchanged between practitioners, quality man-agement and development. I am very happy to have experienced employ-ees and a team that is close to the market here”.

There is a lot to test given the huge TECE product range. The products must undergo thermal changes and meet a wide range of water quali-ties for drinking and heating water. The fittings are sophisticated – this is where processing quality and product quality interact and it is only in this optimised interplay of safe as-sembly and safe product that quality is created. There are also electric and electronic components – such as with the flush actuation – and mechanical components, as they are used in a flush plate. Finally, the mix of materials must be examined,

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Quality management

2

1 Dr Jan Heine in the TECE quality laboratory: 600 square metres for tests and discussions.

2 The internal pressure creep rupture test guaran-tees permanent material strength. The pipe and fitting must withstand temperatures from 20°C to 120°C and internal pressures of up to 60 bar for up to 10,000 hours.

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Quality management

4

3

3 The cistern in the endurance test - here 100,000 flushes transparent in the QM laboratory – instead of behind tiles in the bathroom.

4 Flush plate test: the pneumatic cylinders relent-lessly simulate every fingerprint of a product life cycle.

because different metals and plastics are processed - and they must come together to form a good overall product.

“Quality starts in the mind and has a lot to do with psychology”, says Jan Heine. The sense of quality in a car, for example, is often decided when getting into a car before even testing the core use of driving: this sense of

quality is emitted by the good seat or solid sound when closing the door. “The art is to gauge the customer expectation correctly. Whether the haptics of a flush platel are right - or whether the noise is right with the flush actuation”. The product must stand up to intense everyday use and

must also be processed by less qual-ified employees without causing any errors. A lot can be avoided by tests – but there is often not a suitable test method available: “So then we devel-op one”, says Dr Heine and smiles. “The company’s attitude is: we do not tolerate errors”.

PROJECT IDEA / INITIATION

(New project ideas through market feedback)

PROJECTCONFIRMATION

SALES RELEASE

PROJECT

RELEASE

PRODUCTION

RELEASE

TECHNICAL DESIG

N

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PROJEC

TSTA

RTSTA

RT

PILO

T SE

RIES

PROJECT

END

Q as in quality managementUnlike with quality assurance, which mainly checks the product, quality management is involved in every phase of product development. Customer feedback keeps the cycle of continuous product improvement up to date.

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Student project with TECEprofil

Showroom: container to goHow can you transform a 16-foot container into a showroom? Using TECEprofil elements, the architecture students Tim Hornung and Pascal Feck from the Münster University of Applied Sciences created a mobile exhibition space.

Students of the Münster University of Applied Sciences researched new forms of product presentation in a competition led by Professor Kazyu Blumfeld Hanada. Tim Hornung and Pascal Feck chose the TECEprofil stud building system when extending the container – and won.

Both trainee architects staged the TECEprofil pre-wall system, which normally remains hidden behind the wall. “We altered the look and feel of the galvanised steel parts and thus created a flexible and functional shelving system”, says Pascal Feck. The container now fulfils two func-tions. “In transport mode, the equip-ment for race events can be loaded quickly and transported safely, and in presentation mode we have the option to offer properties a tailored, quiet space.”

1 Pascal Feck and Tim Hornung with Professor Kazu Blumfeld Hanada (from left), under whose guidance the students researched new forms of product presentation.

2 TECEprofil has dolled itself up for the big appearance: here is a corner joint with translucent shelf boards. (Photo: Feck/Hornung)

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The mobile showroom was first pre-sented to the public at the Nurbürg-ring at the start of August. TECE is active here as the main sponsor of the Frankish ADAC GT Masters racer, Elia Erhart, and accompanies his races with the TECE Cube, a mobile event lounge in which TECE regularly invites tradespeople, planners and architects to get a taste of racing.

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Trade fair dates

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TECE close to youTECE is active on a global scale and displays its products and solutions all over the world at numerous trade fairs. Here is an overview of where you can discover TECE “close to you” for yourself.

1 Equip´Hotel / Paris / France / 11 – 15/11/2018 2 GET Nord / Hamburg / Germany / 22 – 24/11/20183 BAU / Munich / Germany / 14 – 19/01/20194 Bouwbeurs / Utrecht / Netherlands / 04 – 08/02/20195 Aquatherm / Moscow / Russia / 12 – 15/02/20196 Batibouw / Brussels / Belgium / 21/02 – 03/03/20197 Aquatherm / Tashkent / Uzbekistan / 27/02 – 01/03/20198 Energiesparmesse / Wels / Austria / 27/02 – 03/03/20199 ISH / Frankfurt a. M. / German / 11 – 15/03/201910 Voronezh Build / Voronezh / Russia / 28 – 29/03/2019

11 MosBuild / Moscow / Russia / 02 – 05/04/201912 Conex / Pasay City / Philippines / 11 – 13/04/201913 Fair Ptáček / Brno / Czech Republic / 23 – 27/04/201914 Resta / Vilnius / Lithuania, 25 – 27/04/201815 MIID / Kuala Lumpur / Malaysia / 25 – 27/04/201916 InstalFest / Kiev / Ukraine / 15 –18/05/201917 Building Industry of Far East region / Khabarovsk / Russia / 23 – 26/05/201918 KBC / Shanghai / China / 27 - 30/05/201919 Archidex / Kuala Lumpur / Malaysia / 03 – 06/07/201920 Builders / Rangoon / Myanmar / 01 – 03/08/2019

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This shower channel fi ts perfectly into all planningTECEdrainprofi le is the stainless steel shower profi le for the next generation – it can be individually cut to length and thus fi ts in every dimension. This shower channel for fl ush-to-wall mounting combines the aesthetics of a shower channel with the cleaning comfort of a point drain.

recessed

NOW REDEFINED TO MEASURE

TECE GmbH | Hollefeldstrasse 57 | 48282 Emsdetten | www.tece.com | international-business@tece.de | T + 49 25 72 / 9 28 - 999