10 Things to Know About Season 11 Episode 2

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00:00Why are we so resistant to change and what can we do to challenge the status

00:04quo? And how do invasive species threaten nature and their way of life? We'll be

00:11looking into all this and more on 10 things to know about.

00:22This week we're exploring how Ireland is built from the minerals and materials

00:26that create our towns and cities to the drive to reshape the future of construction.

00:44Ireland is in the midst of a housing and infrastructure crisis with many homes and

00:50critical water and energy projects needing to be built. And if you need to

00:55build something, you need something to build with. But how many of us actually

01:00think about where all these building materials come from? The answer is all

01:05around us, both above and below ground.

01:11Ireland has a natural wealth of core building materials and we've been

01:16quarrying them here for centuries. I'm in County Monaghan to meet Owen McGrath from

01:21Geological Survey Ireland.

01:24What are raw materials and where do they come from?

01:26Well, raw materials, we still just dig them out of the ground and we use those to build

01:30our homes and our schools and our hospitals. So we dig rock out of the ground or we crush

01:35it up to make aggregate and mix that with cement, which also comes out of the ground.

01:38How much raw materials are needed, say, to build a house?

01:41It's a lot more than you'd think. For an average three bedroom semi-detached house in a new

01:45housing estate, it's in the order of 300 tonnes of material.

01:49That is a huge amount.

01:50It's quite a lot. So if you think about it, for every house, you need to have a

01:53house-sized hole in the ground to build that house with.

01:59When you look around your home, you'll see a lot more things that have come out of the ground.

02:03Everything in your home that is metal has been mined. Anything that's coated with zinc,

02:07anything that's made of copper, the wires in your electrical equipment, the pipes that carry the

02:12water to and from your home, all of that stuff has to be mined and has to be produced, refined,

02:17and then turned into a product before it's brought and used to construct your home.

02:33Natural resources formed the backbone of Ireland's construction industry,

02:36and I'm heading underground with geologist Siobhan Power to find out a bit more about one of our key

02:42resources, gypsum, which was first discovered in this area in the 1800s.

02:52So gypsum, it's a mineral. It's calcium sulphate. It forms by evaporation. And you can see it's a very

02:58soft material. See, it's actually softer than your nail. You can really scrape it. You can really scrape it.

03:03People possibly know about gypsum being as an additive to cement for the making of mortar or

03:10concrete. And also maybe they know it from your chalk from school times, from the blackboard.

03:16The primary use is the making of plasterboard. They extract it, they crush it, they dry it,

03:22and then they wet it again to mould it into these flat sheets between two sheets of paper. And it's,

03:28it's a very useful construction material for the interior of houses, ceilings.

03:36Minerals like gypsum help tell our planet's amazing geological story.

03:41The Earth's outer rigid layer consists of giant jigsaw pieces known as tectonic plates that are

03:47constantly moving. And while it's hard to imagine today, the pieces that created the island of Ireland

03:53moved from south of the equator to our current location over hundreds of millions of years.

03:59The slow movement of these plates helped forge the mineral deposits that would become

04:03the foundation of our natural resources. Minerals like zinc, copper and gypsum.

04:10So it all formed over 250 million years ago. It's very hot, very little rain. These water bodies would

04:16evaporate that concentrated the minerals that were in the water. And so we're left with this big,

04:23we think of it as a big desert or a big sea of gypsum. So apart from the usefulness of the gypsum,

04:29it is a lovely snapshot of the Irish geological history and a very important little section of the

04:37Irish geological story, if you like. What's the role of a geologist in sourcing building materials?

04:44Well, geologists like rocks. Geologists like to map rocks because we first went looking after coal.

04:50This is 180 years ago. But then we mapped the whole of the geology of Ireland.

04:55In a place like here, they were able to identify two beds of gypsum. And from the readings, they would

05:02have known the dipping direction and would have known where to go underground to search for. And that's

05:09what geologists do now is to map out the whole understanding of the underground. So if we take

05:15drill core, that gives us individual spots that we can develop a model of what it looks like

05:21underneath. So it's almost like we're building up a 3D picture of the underground and telling

05:26stories of that. That's exactly what we are doing, yes. What a fascinating science to be involved in. It's

05:31it's the best science to be involved with. Yes, it is kind of a detective thing. It's observational and

05:37infinitely useful.

05:50Mining remains essential to supply the raw materials on which our modern world is built.

05:55But we need to maximize resources and minimize environmental impacts.

05:59Locating manufacturing plants beside quarries cuts transportation costs, promotes recycling and

06:06reduces waste. This operation is 90 years old next year. We've got three to four families with four

06:13generations of that family working for us, both here at the factory and at the mine site.

06:18You obviously have a huge history and tradition here of mining. So can you tell me about some of the modern

06:24recycling methods that you're using? We use a high percentage of external construction-based

06:29plasterboard recycling material. So the material that comes in from an external source, it's offloaded

06:35in a plasterboard recycling facility. We mix that with some of our own internal material and we blend

06:40that in with our own gypsum and water and different additives to make plasterboard.

06:44The more recycled material we use in plasterboard manufacturing, the less virgin rock material we

06:50use from local mining. Today we've seen a really nice example of where we have a mine and a processing

06:56plant really close together. How important is it to have this industry here in Ireland?

07:01It's really important for economic reasons but it's also really important for climate and

07:04sustainability reasons. Everything that we produce that we use in Ireland that comes out of the mines

07:09in this area of the country, if we didn't produce them here they would have to be imported with the

07:14consequent carbon impact. It's like shop local. It's exactly shop local.

07:30Right now we're in the midst of two predicaments. We need to build more houses and infrastructure and

07:34we need to cut our carbon emissions. But if we build more, we emit more. So to meet the challenges of the

07:40housing and climate crisis, we need to modernize. And modernizing the construction industry also has

07:46to factor in an aging workforce and skills shortage. Daniel McCrum is a structural engineer at UCD.

07:54We think about standard ways of doing construction, you know, you think of a masonry house

07:59where you have a bricklayer who's manually doing these processes and they're very hard to find those

08:03bricklayers anymore. As well as that, we have an aging society. We're going to have less workers in the

08:08future. So we, on one side, we have to rethink the way we're doing construction. But then on the other

08:13side is the climate emergency that we have. By 2030, we'll have to reduce our carbon emissions by 50%.

08:21If we think about concrete, which is the second most used material in the world after water,

08:26it's an excellent building material. But if you think about the materials that are required in concrete,

08:31we have aggregates, which are small stones. We have sand. They both have to come from quarries. Then we have

08:37water. And then we have cement. That cement is produced using very high temperature processes

08:44using fossil fuels. So it has something we refer to as very high embodied carbon because the emissions

08:49are so large. So the question is, how do we change the traditional materials that we need to use,

08:55but also how do we bring in new materials and then new processes? What are those new methods?

08:59We're in a factory here today. We can see one of those types of construction. So that's offsite

09:04construction. We can build the entire modules of our building, you know, three-dimensional modules.

09:08So we build the floor and the wall panels. We can bring them to the building site,

09:12stack them together to create our buildings. So this is kind of an indoor building site.

09:16It looks like a factory to us, but actually all the components of the houses are being made here

09:20to be transported to the site eventually. That's exactly it.

09:24Robotic technology is transforming construction. And Daniel's colleagues in UCD

09:30are developing new concrete mixes to be used by robots. And then the other side is,

09:35we'll be changing the structural thicknesses. So reducing the thickness of the walls because

09:40they're too strong at present. So we're reducing those down, doing the testing to verify that this works.

09:45Timber is an important material in modern methods of construction. As trees grow, they absorb carbon

10:01dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their wood. When timber is used in construction,

10:06this stored carbon remains locked within the building.

10:09You see timber frame construction here today. And last year, that counted for 31% of all new

10:17build residential homes were built using timber frame. This is a massive transformation. You're

10:21saying that over 31% of new houses are being built with this method. We won't be able to say

10:26building something brick by brick anymore. Well, absolutely, because we'll be building them

10:30by panel by panel or module by module. Timber frame construction and the use of pre-manufactured

10:36components are just some of the ways the industry is improving efficiency and reducing emissions.

10:41Jason Van Hout is showing me new technologies being developed to enhance the potential of timber-based

10:46construction. What we're looking at now is a new prototype that we're looking to bring forward.

10:51It's a lightweight, innovative cladding system. It's basically a fiber cement board with computer

10:57generated 3D printed brick. I mean, it feels and looks exactly like a traditional house. It's as

11:03strong as one as well. Yeah, this has been through a lot of climate testing, durability testing,

11:08fire and acoustics. And when I've seen some of these houses in our apartment blocks in construction,

11:13it's kind of amazing to see a crane just lifting in, you know, a whole floor the side of the building.

11:18It just makes everything so much faster. Very much so. It is well documented. There's the

11:22diminishing labour workforce. So we've got to look at smarter and more efficient ways to deliver our

11:28houses. Now, that doesn't mean that the traditional construction workers will now be redundant. It's

11:34about evolving and reskilling that workforce. With rising construction costs, price remains a key

11:41consideration. While this type of method may have higher upfront costs than a traditional build,

11:47by assembling key elements in a controlled environment, some weather and site issues can

11:51be avoided, allowing for faster, more efficient delivery. But you're a big company. What about

11:56this kind of small builders? Will this kind of technology be available to them as well?

12:00That's a key point. The more that people deliver and start bringing this sort of type of innovation

12:06to the market, it's going to become more prominent. And then once it becomes more prominent

12:12and used more often, then that's when you see prices coming down.

12:16Will we be able to reconcile all the construction and infrastructure that needs to be built

12:22with our carbon emission budget? I think we stand a good chance whether we'll achieve it all by

12:28by 2030 or not. And that remains to be seen. What I see with modern methods of construction,

12:34I think over the next few years, is they won't be comparing themselves to traditional construction

12:38anymore. They're going to start competing amongst themselves for lower embodied carbon. So I think

12:44that's where the competition is going to be. This is the most amount of change I've seen in the

12:49industry in the last few years. And I think it's very exciting. And I think not all of it, but mostly

12:54the industry is very energized by it. The truth is traditional methods of construction and a business

13:01as usual approach to building are not going to cut it when it comes to meeting our housing and climate

13:05targets. The good news is there are innovative solutions out there. And if the industry can embrace

13:11this progress, the results could be transformative.

13:41It has been said that one of the greenest buildings is the one that already exists. Geologist Patrick

13:48Weiss Jackson studies Ireland's architecture to inform building conservation and restoration

13:54that's both accurate and visually seamless. He's taking me on a tour of Dublin city centre.

14:01So Patrick, what kind of stone are we looking at here?

14:05Well, this is a lovely yellow stone. And to be able to tell what it is, what a geologist would do,

14:11is they would want to get nice and close to it. First of all, I can feel it. You can feel it's a

14:16little bit rough. You've got a bit of texture to it. And then using the hand lens, if you get up

14:20nice and close, I can see sand grains in there. This is a sandstone from a place called Darleydale

14:27in Derbyshire. In Victorian times, they were very flamboyant. And the stone reflects that,

14:31the colour of the stone. If we move through college green, we'll go from yellows to reds,

14:37to greys and to blacks. There are about 170 different stone types used in the city.

14:43All coming from different places? All coming from different places.

14:46Well, as we move up the street, we will see the stone types actually change a little bit.

14:51And this is one of my favourite buildings. It was the National Bank. And it's built

14:56of Ballynock and Granite. So West Wicklow. And what is unusual about this stone, in this case,

15:03it's been highly carved. You don't normally get it as highly carved as that.

15:08It's very beautiful. It is very beautiful. And it shows also that the banks had the money to

15:13spend on stone. Here we have another bank building. And the stone is different. If we get close to it,

15:20you will see that it's a limestone. And then for me, the really interesting thing that many people wouldn't

15:24bother looking at is this. This is the plinth for the railings. Yes. And it looks a bit like black

15:30pudding. Yes, it does. With big crystals of quartz in here. And this is a rock from Bestbrook in

15:38County Down. I suspect it was used as a sort of symbol for the fact this was the Ulster Bank. So could

15:44they get an Ulster stone in here? On my tour with Patrick, I'm struck that while statues are

15:50on our figures from literature, music and history, their stone opens up a window into a far older

15:55story of ancient fossilized creatures frozen in time. It just shows the type of environment

16:02these limestones were growing in. So this would have been quite warm tropical water where corals

16:07were thriving. Okay. Yeah, I love this. I think it's beautiful.

16:23Local rock gives our town their distinctive character and signature. But that stone can become

16:28weathered and damaged over time. So how do you go about restoring the facade or the structural integrity

16:35of these kind of historical and heritage buildings? You would have a survey done of the building.

16:40You'd look at the facade and you'd assess every block of stone within it. You'd work out the

16:46three-dimensional shape. You'd look at where there was decayed on the surface.

16:51The first step of any building restoration is working out where the original stone came from.

16:56And Patrick is taking me to Trinity's public theatre. It was built in the late 18th century,

17:02but its story goes back much further in geological time.

17:06So this is an example here of a West Wicklow Leinster granite. This was originally formed

17:13during the Devonian period, when there was a collision between two continents and an ocean

17:18disappeared. And so you got the land masses colliding. Materials pushed down and melted and lots of

17:25granite came up. And the Leinster granite, which runs from Kalini all the way down to Waterford,

17:31is just one huge batholith, one huge mass of granite. It's not all the same. And so we have to look at

17:39this stone and try to characterize it. By studying tiny details in the stone, Patrick seeks to trace its

17:46origin. I'm about to get an even closer view of our geological past, with the use of a special microscope.

17:53Amy, here we have our petrological microscope, with our thin section of granite in place. And when you

18:00look down the eyepieces, you will see three different minerals within that. They come up in different

18:05colours. And the grey is the quartz, the stripy is the feldspar, and then the lovely bluey-green,

18:12orangey mineral, that's the mica. So it allows us to really look at this stone in more detail.

18:18That's fantastic.

18:22The next step is some good old-fashioned detective work. By studying handwritten records and documents

18:35in the college archives, and comparing those to old maps from the 18th century, Patrick is able to

18:41narrow down the search to three stone quarries in Wicklow. So one of these stone quarries is where

18:48the stone comes from. But you have to work out exactly which one.

18:52Yes. And so we go to another piece of research. And here we have a paper by a man called Peter Brook.

18:59He mapped the northern part of the Leinster Granite. What we're interested in here is type two, the

19:08equi-granular, which is this. So we see Ballynocken here. If we've decided, yes, we definitely know that

19:15the stone here in Trinity came from Blessington and Golden Hill. Then if we go down to Ballynocken and to

19:21Granite Begg further south, we're in the right unit. It's just fascinating work. And then of course,

19:27you know, we want to learn about the people involved, the stonemasons, stone carvers,

19:33the architects and so on that have gone towards building this. So it's a jigsaw puzzle.

19:41Granite from Ballynocken in County Wicklow was used in hundreds of historic Dublin buildings,

19:46and it's now being used to help restore them. The McEvoys have been quarrying granite since

19:52the 1840s. And John McEvoy is a fifth generation stonemason.

19:59So John, how do you go about figuring out what piece of stone to use or what to use to restore

20:04a thing with? Well, the first thing we do is we try to organize a site visit so we can see the stone

20:11in place and see what way it is. And then you have your grain to consider and then you have your colour

20:17because with quarrying practices, the deeper you go down, the whiter, brighter, harder, more dense the

20:24stone becomes. But we're talking about matching stone at a time where the quarries were mainly surface

20:31quarries because water pumps weren't readily available. Electricity wasn't here at all. Then we look at what

20:36finishes on that stone. So many different finishes can be put on it from a punched finish to a draft

20:43finish and they call this rough ashlar finish where it's all left like a natural rock finish.

20:49And then we will match that. Now there's no machines to match all those old finishes today,

20:54so a lot of them are still done here by hand. So it's a very hard tough game, but it's a very rewarding

21:01game because, you know, when you create something and you make something from scratch and you know

21:07you've been shown something by your uncle or your father or your grandfather that they used to do

21:13and you know that you were putting a little bit of what they taught into that piece. It's a magical feeling.

21:21We're the custodians of our buildings and there's over 600 buildings in Dublin that have used

21:26Ballynock and Granite. That's a massive amount of buildings. The skeleton of Dublin City is Ballynock

21:32and Granite. That's the way we look on it. So if we don't maintain this and maintain it to the highest

21:37standard by using the stone where the building's DNA is, well what you have then is you might be

21:43mixing it with imported stones which don't fit our climate. They don't look like our stone and you'll end

21:50up with this patchwork quilt effect which isn't very nice to look at. By using the original stone we're

21:57also then preserving the culture and the craftsmanship that went into making that stone. That is really

22:03important. By utilising this material there are opportunities to train people in these crafts so

22:10they're not lost. There is another good reason. We have to be consider the carbon cost. So if we bring in

22:18granite from the continent or indeed from China, what's the carbon cost of getting it here as against

22:24bringing it from West Wicklow? We need to protect our buildings, whether that's honouring centuries of

22:31history or using technology to look to the future. It takes time and passion and expertise to sustain

22:38and preserve our built environment.

22:52That's our 10 things to know about Building Ireland. Next time we're exploring the science of our

22:57region and this is from our town to our region. We know that too many times we are discussing everything

23:03in the region. So let's start talking about this natural wall. We're also seeing progress,

23:11so we've got a little bit of a few of the things we've got to happen here.

23:15The side of the hill is indeed showing the number of the ships in the region and the season

23:18is going to be growing. If it's one of the most of the ships we have to continue to make it a little bit more

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