Lundellska skolan. Photo: Anders Bobert

Kronåsen in Uppsala is a conversion and reuse project adapting Uppsala University's former campus into a modern, municipal upper secondary school for 1,400 students.
Two Instalco companies are involved in the project: Intec Mitt is responsible for designing the heating and plumbing and Rörgruppen for the installation itself.

The project is located adjacent to the Lundellska School’s existing premises in Uppsala and includes four buildings with a total area of 20,000 square metres and a schoolyard with an area of just over 10,000 square metres.

Together with Rörgruppen, Intec has drawn up an extensive inventory of the existing material to see how much of it can be reused. It has been possible to reuse approximately 80 percent of the radiators, and sanitary facilities such as wash-hand basins and toilet seats and bowls have been reused at the rate of about 60 percent.

“This project is focussing strongly on sustainability and the requirements reuse as much as possible are high. We have reused everything that has been left in good condition after its previous use. We did, however, replace the taps for most of the wash-hand basins and put a new flush mechanism in the WC bowls. Otherwise many materials have been reused,” says Jacob Berg, CEO of Intec Mitt.

In the course of the project, calculations have also been made regarding carbon dioxide equivalents, which is a measure of greenhouse gas emissions that takes into account the influence of the greenhouse effect and global warming.

“New construction of similar buildings is often at around 300 kilos CO2e/GTA (carbon dioxide equivalent/gross total area). As a preliminary estimate, this project will end up at around 44 CO2e/GTA. Out of this amount, the share emitted by the heating and plumbing work represents approximately 1.6 kilos CO2e/GTA, which is a fraction of the normal amount emitted by new construction,” explains Jacob Berg.

“More and more often we are encountering recycling projects that are linked to CO2 equivalents. Recycling projects have certainly existed for a long time, but initially they were more linked to financial savings, rather than sustainability as a first consideration. But today we are seeing an increase where both financial and sustainability considerations are included in recycling.

“We have finished planning and stage one has been completed during the summer with move-in to one of the buildings. At the same time stage two is underway, and the large central building, a former barracks, will be ready for use in the autumn of 2024. The old and historic administrative building requires careful renovation since, for example, many of its original details must be retained.”

For this project, Hemsö Fastigheter is the client and Zengun is the construction contractor.