Passive House Hotel.

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Also, Boutique Hotel Staadthalle had invested 700,000 euros in systems like water volume reduction, rainwater collection, and recycling drinking water, LED lighting, solar panels and water pumps. [1]

The balance could be even positive for the hotel if they get the approval to install two wind turbines in the roof.

An “instabus” system

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An “instabus” system allows the hotel to manage and control its electrical devices and to program their use only when it is required. This system is a Desigo building automation and control system and is provided by the company Siemens.

Design provides programmable automation controllers (PAC) and flexible key performance indicators (KPI) for demand-based or scheduled measuring and control of the heating and cooling. Desigo also controls and monitors the thermal mass activation, water heating, solar power system, buffer management, and geothermal heat pump. All the data is saved in the system and it can eve provide statistics and then be used to improvements plans. [2]

Solar panels and photovoltaic panels

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For producing electricity, the hotel uses a PV power plant with 93 m2 photovoltaic panels and plans to implement also 4 wind turbines, one the government authorities allow them.

For heating, 130 m² solar thermal panels can produce enough hot water for the whole hotel, however this depends on the weather and in the hotel occupancy.

These renewable technologies cover one façade of the building and part of the entrance façade.

Heat water pump /Water

For the Cooling, the hotel uses the Ground source heat pumps. The system collects water at 14º from ground water levels and takes the energy out to heat the building in winter or cool it in summer. Cold water collected from the warm water pump and rainwater are also used to flush the toilets and water the garden.[pic 15]

Passive house

The construction of the passive house was completed in 2009, and was the first passive house used as a hotel, which converted the Boutique Hotel Staadthalle in the first passive hotel. Several “smart features” were added to this new building.

For example only LED lights are used in the passive house. The entire consumption of electricity in all the staircases and hallways of the passive house account for 244 Watt. If all the lights were switched on in all the 38 rooms, the consumption would make a total of 1344 Watt. The small consumption of the passive house includes the electricity used for the water heating pumps and the electricity of the technical area of the passive house.

In which refers to cooling, the passive house is heated and cooled by the concrete core activation. The water heat pumps work with well-water. After the process of energy extraction the cold water is then used to flush the toilets, these leads that even when the laundry facilities are located in the passive house the water consumption in this building is less than in the parent building.

The passive house can reaches the zero energy balance for itself and even provide enough energy for the parent building, reaching then a zero energy balance for all hotel facilities. [pic 16]

It is also remarkable that there are not frigobars in the rooms, instead cold and hot beverages can be purchased in the reception this reduces 21,000 kg of CO2 each year.

All these are examples of how much impact the little actions can generate.

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Recycling and Upcycling

Recycling

In this hotel, they recycle and try to make environmental efforts, such as electricity and water-saving measures. They have also a waste prevention and separation policy like Organic waste composting. The garbage from each room is separated by hand by the cleaning staff.

In the bathrooms instead of providing small amenities, the hotel offers soap dispensers in both shower and next to the sink. These containers are PET containers and can be recycled, also the toilet paper is make with recycled paper.

As well as if guests throw out any form of dental hygiene products, the hotel collects them and send them to our partner “TerraCycle” who upcycle this hard-to-recycle-waste to create new products.[pic 18]

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Upcycling

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Since 2014, they hotel began with the Upcycling concept. Upcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products, into new material of better quality or better environmental value. This means reusing products with no further use in a creative way. Upcycling gives an item a better purpose.

[pic 21]Hotel Stadthalle has some rooms decorated with upcycled products and this has converted in one of the reasons because the guests prefer the hotel.

Economics

The investment in the passive house was about 30% greater than if a classical building would had been built, and they will have to wait two more years to recuperate the invested money, but the costs for electricity and water are also about 4% less than in a traditional hotel, and several other aspects had also been improved because of the passive house, such as:

- Gaining competitive advantage by being a leader in the sector

- Customer loyalty

- Employee retention

- Awards and recognition

- Regulatory compliance

- Risk management

- Increased brand value.

Awards

Some awards gave to Boutique hotel Stadthalle[3].

- October 2014: Tripadvisor Green Leader Certificate – Platinum level

- July 2014: Green Brands Certicate 2014/15

- November 8, 2010: They earned the Austrian climate protection award (Österreichischer Klimaschutzpreis) in the category agriculture and trade by the federal ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment