Actium Wonen is working on plans for a neighborhood heat network for 300 rental properties in the Composersbuurt-Oost in Assen. According to the housing corporation, the signs are favorable, because houses get comfortably warm and the energy price is more affordable for tenants.
The operation in the Noorderpark district is desperately needed, says Vastgoed Rob Hoogeveen manager of Actium. In her working area in Assen and the surrounding area, the housing rental company wants to make at least 2450 houses more sustainable in 4.5 years. “Those are the most gas -consuming homes. So we still have to make significant strokes.”
The heat network in Assen will be the first to install Actium Wonen. Although the bullet is not yet completely through the church. Further investigation will follow in the coming weeks. But the renovation of the first 98 houses will start at the end of April, next year the construction of the heat network.
The 300 single -family homes on Paganinilaan, Bachstraat, Vivaldilaan and Obrechtlaan, date from the late 1960s, early seventies. They eat gas. But after insulation of roof, floors, walls and walls, new glass, possibly new frames and good ventilation, a collective heating network is the most certain and cheapest way to remove the houses from the gas, says Hoogeveen.
“The contractor who tackles this neighborhood, the Dijkstra Draisma Bouwgroep, sees good opportunities for this. They have already installed such a small collective neighborhood heat network in Sneek and Leeuwarden and the experiences are good there,” says Hoogeveen.
According to Actium, the collective heat system is much more affordable, and moreover more reliable, than all houses equipped with a heat pump. “We have already placed heat pumps at earlier neighborhood renovations. They appear to be very sensitive to interference and also noisy. Moreover, the lifespan is much shorter. We think that the heat network is more comfortable, and moreover the energy price lower.”
Somewhere centrally in the Composersbuurt-Oost there are three large heat pumps. They have sufficient capacity to bring the houses to a good temperature. According to Rob Hoogeveen, the Actium neighborhood heat network cannot be compared with the large municipal heat networks, for which pipes are going into the ground, and about which there is much to do due to substantial price increases. “For this we may not even have to dig slots with tubes in the ground, but we pull pipes under the roof.”
Costs for Actium, to make these 300 homes more energy efficient, are 100,000 euros per house, according to Hoogeveen. This means that the sustainability operation comes to at least 30 million. But according to Actium, that is always cheaper than separate heat pumps everywhere. And soon, the energy costs, as is calculated, will be lower for the tenants.
“But we are not going over a night of ice. We let everything be calculated again very well. In addition, affordable and comfortable for tenants is paramount, and of course affordable for Actium. Because renting up, we don’t want that.”
In a few weeks, Actium will make the knot and follows the first phase. “There has been a first residents’ evening, where we have explained our sustainability plan. Most of the reactions were enthusiastic, although there are certainly still questions. We will work on that, and tenants get an answer to everything.”
In addition to this small neighborhood heating network, which Actium itself becomes the boss, the housing association in Assen is involved in the municipal heat network that the city council wants to realize. That is a rural testing ground, in which 450 houses are removed from the gas. The municipality wants to see how she can best roll out a heat network throughout Assen.
That test would first take place in Lariks-West. There was not enough interest in the chosen test area with purchase and rental homes. That pilot project is now shifting to Lariks-Noord, for which 450 ACTIUM rental properties are in the picture. The municipality hopes to have more clarity about this before the summer.
“But that process all takes much longer. We can’t wait for that municipal network, we have to make it more sustainable, so we’re going to work on a small scale,” concludes Hoogeveen. “But our heat network can always join the large heat network.”