Ice Box Challenge Results

Can insulation, high performance windows and doors (and shading!), a good airtightness and less thermal bridges help to keep your building cool? Well after 8 days of exhibition, the amount of ice went down from 1000 kg to…

❄       9 kg in the conventional box,
❄       2 kg in the conventional box with thinner concrete walls,
❄       207 kg in the Eco Niwas Samhita box ,
❄      … and 619 kg in the Passive House box !

Congratulations to P. Sethi, S. Kammari, M. Malkoti, as well as to J. Singh, A. Dhote, A. Prasad, P. Gajbhiye and A. Lohar for their close guess!

Hopefully this experiment will foster buildings that are not only beautiful, but can also keep occupants comfortable and protect them from worsening climatic conditions. We are looking to further Ice Box experiments and variants - yes, lower operational and embodied energy can be achieved at the same time and in the different climatic zones of India !

A warm thank you as well to B.G SHIRKE CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY PVT.LTD for providing the prefabricated structures and especially to Yogesh Kajale for making this exhibition possible in such a short timeframe and for the extensive onsite support, Dr. hc. Mario Schmidt for providing the high performance Lingel doors and his team for helping out with finishing the boxes on time, KALCO for donating the high performance windows and for manufacturing the FIRST Indian Passive House window, Rothoblaas for providing the airtight tapes, roofing membrane and advices, as well as BASF for offering the insulation boards of box 3 and 4. Last but not least, thank you to Niti Aayog and MOEFCC for awarding this idea in the first place and of course thank you as well to all the speakers, students, participant!