The riothermal system implemented on the renovation project won the 2020 Golden Publica Award in the category of “Urban Development, Infrastructure & Mobility”.
Uccle residents have known it for years as the former headquarters of Fabricom. The U building, first constructed in the 1970s, will now serve as their new town hall. After laying vacant for years, it is now in the final phase of its renovation and will soon house 450 city workers in the coming months. This urban and sustainable conversion project, and winner of the be.exemplary 2017 call for projects, is the work of SOCATRA.
But the main environmental and energy challenge of this project is undoubtedly the riothermal system (“rio” from the Dutch word “riolering”, meaning “sewers”). This innovative technique consists in using sewer heat to warm or cool the building in a pilot project carried out by Vivaqua (the public company managing water and sewers in Brussels) and the ULB. The riothermal system aims to use thermal inertia with a heat exchanger placed in wastewater pipes, in this case the public sewers of Rue de Stalle, in combination with a heat pump in the building’s boiler room. Since the sewers are warmer in the winter and colder in the summer, this technology cools buildings in the summer and heats them in the winter. The goal of this project is to cover 25% of the building’s heating and cooling needs. As the key innovation of this project, the riothermal system combines resource recovery, architecture preservation and technological innovation.
