Wetland – Reed

WETLAND REED

For centuries we in the Netherlands have relied on the availability of reed when building our dwellings. This fast growing, sturdy, rot resistant insulating material is perfect as a roofing material and defined many archetypical farms in the center parts of the Netherlands. As early as 2016 STV is working with reed in a non conventional manner, trying to find alternative applications for the material itself but also the amount of organic waste that remains when cleaning out the reed in the reed bogs in Weerribben-Wieden. Many of our reed growing plots are disappearing due to changing water quality, cultivation of agricultural lands, increase of our population and reed farmers stopping with their profession. Reed is however one of the most promising materials if we want to make our buildings more sustainable. It is local, the cultivation and processing is well tested and documented, in combination with CLT wood constructions we can store even more CO2 in our buildings.

In an attempt to develop new applications for reed STV has produced a sandwich panel only using reed as a construction material. Sandwich panels are relatively lightweight construction panels that make optimal use of material properties. Typically a sandwich panel has two thin outer layers that have high tensile strength and not stretch, these two thin layers are separated by a thicker layer which has high compressive strength. Currently these materials are often petro-chemical, being glasfiber and some sort of foam such as EPS or PIR. STV has construct a reed-sandwich panel utilizing all the interesting properties of reed for this, its fiber strength to replace the tensile outer layers and the compressive strength of a hollow tube for the compression layer. Everything is connected with a biobased adhesive.