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VOL. 12.2

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By Kasom “Sep” Kantavanich

The house is located on Vichit Songkram Road, Kathu District, Phuket. The owner is Jurgen Groneberger, an electrical engineer from Hamburg, Germany, who moved to Thailand 18 years ago. He currently lives in the house with his family; his wife, Maneerat, runs one of her boutiques, Kantikara, in another building a few steps away.
So far as the construction goes, the house is a collaboration between Jurgen himself, who is also the owner of Rothermann Elektrotechnik Gmbh & Co, one of the top 10 Hamburg-based energy companies, specializing in both energy utilization and conservation, and his Thai friend, Nuttapong Intuputi, a 37-year-old architect and the managing director of the Bangkok-based Lock-BUILD Group.

Years back when the two first met, Nuttapong was especially interested in the interlocking building system developed at the University of Hawaii, where he got his Masters degree in architecture. (He later transferred to the Asian Institute of Technology, in Bangkok.) “I am an architect by trade. Yet I have always tried to look for ways to build things using the least number of resources, particularly natural resources. And, of course, I want to build as cheaply as possible without compromising when it comes to quality.

“The system we apply is much like Legos, in some ways. We use concrete blocks molded from locally available inorganic building materials such as sand, soil, gypsum and cement. Neither beams nor poles are needed; the walls themselves are designed to bear all the weight. Yet these structures can withstand earthquakes up to 7.2 on the Richter scale and 300kph winds. They’re fire resistant. And, best of all from an environmental standpoint,” adds Nuttapong as he toys with a brick-size piece of gray concrete block, “the system requires no land adjustment and there is no wooden formwork to end up as waste.”

One thing led to another, and fast. With the two of them working together, they soon adopted a wall-and-roof cooling scheme and the Subterra wastewater treatment system Jurgen had brought with him from Germany – technologies that save on energy costs at the same time they’re environmentally friendly.

The concept behind the cooling system is simple. An air-tight polyethylene pipe full of cold water zigzags through the walls, which are constructed from what Nuttapong describes as Lego blocks. As with a fridge, wall temperatures can be adjusted by the twist of a knob on a controller connected to a heat pump. The beauty of the system lies in its simplicity. It is also superior to conventional heat insulation, since not only is exterior heat kept out, but interior heat – say for example the 100 watts produced by one person – is abducted into the walls as well. The pipe then snakes up the wall and zigzags again under the roof. The water is naturally heated by sunlight to something like 45-600 Celsius and then stored, ready for hot showers.

The Subterra wastewater treatment can be installed as easily as the cooling system. Here too, water and local materials are used instead of electricity to provide homeowners with comfort at no extra cost. The system, in a nutshell, is a water filtration process conducted underground, which means no smell, no noise, and a lot more household space for the families to enjoy. After going through grease and septic tanks, wastewater is pumped into a perforated PVC pipe buried about 15cm underground. Fed by gravity, the water then seeps through a series of layers including sand and a mix of powdered pine bark and roots and the inner shells of dried coconuts. “We tried many recipes and mixes before we came up with this one,” says Jurgen with the smile of a proud inventor, flashing a photo of an engineer with about a zillion experimental PVC tubes in front of him. “And it took us more than four months of test after test, working at the Chumporn Cabana back in 1996, to come up with what we think is the best method.”

Emerging clear from the bottom layer, the water is intercepted by a plastic sheet and another PVC pipe, and then stored in a tank ready for use. “The water that comes out is clear and odourless, although it isn’t suitable for drinking. But the quality is more than enough to be used to water plants, wash your car or flush the toilets. “What we need people to understand,” says Nuttapong, “is that, for a family with two kids, you can do all this by yourself for under 10,000 baht. It’s an investment that will save you a lot of money in the long run.”

Though simple in concept, the Subterra system achieves remarkable results. Test results show that the nitrate level, for example, is 4.2 milligrams per liter, ammonium is 7.5, and what is known among the environmentalists as BOD or biological oxygen demand is as low as 9. Current European Union standards are 25, 10, and 20, respectively.

As a family man, an engineer, a businessman, an environmentalist and an inventor, Jurgen is also trying out a subsurface water sprinkler system that he claims anyone, with a bit of care and time, also can install by themselves. The system is the same as conventional ones. But by having the tubes – made of high-density rubber punched with holes much smaller than a pinhead to prevent tree roots from clogging it – buried underneath the soil, water can be delivered directly to the roots. No vapourization means no water wasted. “The plants will not be wet on top,” Jurgen says, “but they will be as healthy as ever. You can water them anytime, even while you having a barbeque with your family or throwing a party for your friends.”

Despite all these inventions and the difficulties that both Jurgen and Nuttapong have experienced along the way, there’s one thing that the two still do not understand, and that is this: What stops people from using these systems? “They’re low-tech and low cost,” says Jurgen. “The cooling system, for example, is more efficient than solar panels. Do you know what the payback period is, if you use solar panels to get the same result that my house does now? It’s 14 years, and that’s a long time.

“Our system can help people save as much as 80 percent of their energy consumption right from the start, and the point is, with a building system like Nuttapong’s, people can put up a house for as much as 30 percent cheaper than it is for the way it’s generally done now. The price that I’m talking about includes all the cooling systems and the water treatment.”

According to Jurgen, from the beginning of the new year those who are interested can get a copy of a how-to manual on how to build a house like his from the Chiang Mai Chamber of Commerce and the Energy Efficiency Institute (Thailand) Foundation. Both the cooling and filtration systems are projects financed by Handwerkskammer Hamburg (the Chamber of Small-Scale Industries), a government-owned organization comprised of 120,000 entrepreneurs and skilled labourers living in Hamburg, under a German-Thai technology transfer programme for which the two parties are the representatives. Whatever the programme produces is meant for free distribution to the public. And for those who did not have a chance to see the building of Jurgen’s house, there will be plenty of the pictures in the manual.

“With the possible exception of Bangkok,” Jurgen says, “where pollution levels are very high, Thailand and nearby countries are just perfect for this type of home. Thailand has wind, sun, rain and everything needed to maximize the use of the house. I truly hope that more and more people will begin to appreciate these concepts and start building our way.”