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00:01What can rocks from the past tell us about the world today?
00:05Why are we so resistant to change?
00:08And what can we do to challenge the status quo?
00:11And how do invasive species threaten nature and their way of life?
00:15We'll be looking into all this and more on 10 Things to Know About.
00:19This week we're exploring how Ireland is built.
00:30From the minerals and materials that create our towns and cities
00:33to the drive to reshape the future of construction.
00:49Ireland is in the midst of a housing and infrastructure crisis
00:53with many homes and critical water and energy projects needing to be built.
00:59And if you need to build something, you need something to build with.
01:03But how many of us actually think about where all these building materials come from?
01:09The answer is all around us, both above and below ground.
01:14Ireland has a natural wealth of core building materials
01:20and we've been quarrying them here for centuries.
01:23I'm in County Monaghan to meet Owen McGrath from Geological Survey Ireland.
01:28Owen, what are raw materials and where do they come from?
01:31Well, raw materials, we still just dig them out of the ground
01:34and we use those to build our homes and our schools and our hospitals.
01:38So we dig rock out of the ground or we crush it up to make aggregate
01:41and mix that with cement which also comes out of the ground.
01:43How much raw materials are needed, say, to build a house?
01:46It's a lot more than you'd think.
01:48For an average three-bedroom semi-detached house in a new housing estate,
01:51it's in the order of 300 tonnes of material.
01:54That is a huge amount.
01:55It's quite a lot.
01:56So if you think about it, for every house,
01:58you need to have a house-sized hole in the ground to build that house with.
02:04When you look around your home,
02:05you'll see a lot more things that have come out of the ground.
02:08Everything in your home that is metal has been mined.
02:10Anything that's coated with zinc, anything that's made of copper,
02:13the wires in your electrical equipment,
02:15the pipes that carry the water to and from your home,
02:18all of that stuff has to be mined and has to be produced, refined,
02:21and then turned into a product before it's brought and used to construct your home.
02:25Natural resources formed the backbone of Ireland's construction industry,
02:41and I'm heading underground with geologist Siobhan Power
02:44to find out a bit more about one of our key resources,
02:49gypsum, which was first discovered in this area in the 1800s.
02:57So gypsum, it's a mineral.
02:59It's calcium sulphate.
03:01It forms by evaporation.
03:03And you can see it's a very soft material.
03:05See, it's actually softer than your nail.
03:07You can really scrape it.
03:08People possibly know about gypsum being as an additive to cement
03:13for the making of mortar or concrete.
03:15And also maybe they know it from your chalk from school times,
03:19from the blackboard.
03:20Of course.
03:21The primary use is the making of plasterboard.
03:23They extract it, they crush it, they dry it,
03:26and then they wet it again to mould it into these flat sheets
03:31between two sheets of paper.
03:33And it's a very useful construction material
03:37for the interior of houses, ceilings.
03:41Minerals like gypsum help tell our planet's amazing geological story.
03:46The Earth's outer rigid layer consists of giant jigsaw pieces
03:50known as tectonic plates that are constantly moving.
03:53And while it's hard to imagine today,
03:56the pieces that created the island of Ireland
03:58moved from south of the equator
04:00to our current location over hundreds of millions of years.
04:04The slow movement of these plates
04:06helped forge the mineral deposits
04:08that would become the foundation of our natural resources.
04:11Minerals like zinc, copper and gypsum.
04:15So it all formed over 250 million years ago.
04:18It's very hot, very little rain.
04:20These water bodies would evaporate,
04:23that concentrated the minerals that were in the water.
04:26And so we're left with this big,
04:28think of it as a big desert or a big sea of gypsum.
04:31So apart from the usefulness of the gypsum,
04:34it is a lovely snapshot of the Irish geological history
04:38and a very important little section
04:41of the Irish geological story, if you like.
04:44What's the role of a geologist in sourcing building materials?
04:48Well, geologists like rocks.
04:50Geologists like to map rocks.
04:52Because we first went looking after coal.
04:54This is 180 years ago.
04:56But then we mapped the whole of the geology of Ireland.
04:59In a place like here, they were able to identify two beds of gypsum.
05:05And from the readings, they would have known the dipping direction
05:09and would have known where to go underground to search for.
05:13And that's what geologists do now,
05:15is to map out the whole understanding of the underground.
05:18So if we take drill core, that gives us individual spots
05:23that we can develop a model of what it looks like underneath.
05:27So it's almost like we're building up a 3D picture of the underground
05:30and telling story of that.
05:32That's exactly what we are doing, yes.
05:34What a fascinating science to be involved in.
05:36It's the best science to be involved with, yes.
05:38It is kind of a detective thing.
05:40It's observational and infinitely useful.
05:43Mining remains essential to supply the raw materials
05:58on which our modern world is built.
06:00But we need to maximise resources and minimise environmental impacts.
06:05Locating manufacturing plants beside quarries
06:08cuts transportation costs, promotes recycling and reduces waste.
06:12This operation is 90 years old next year.
06:15We've got three to four families
06:17with four generations of that family working for us,
06:20both here at the factory and at the mine site.
06:23You obviously have a huge history and tradition here of mining.
06:27So can you tell me about some of the modern recycling methods that you're using?
06:30We use a high percentage of external construction-based
06:34plasterboard recycling material.
06:36So the material that comes in from an external source,
06:39it's offloaded in a plasterboard recycling facility.
06:42We mix that with some of our own internal material
06:44and we blend that in with our own gypsum and water
06:47and different additives to make plasterboard.
06:50The more recycled material we use in plasterboard manufacturing,
06:53the less virgin rock material we use from local mining.
06:57Today we've seen a really nice example of where we have a mine
07:00and a processing plant really close together.
07:03How important is it to have this industry here in Ireland?
07:06It's really important for economic reasons,
07:07but it's also really important for climate and sustainability reasons.
07:10Everything that we produce and that we use in Ireland
07:13that comes out of the mines in this area of the country,
07:16if we didn't produce them here, they would have to be imported
07:18with the consequent carbon impact.
07:20It's like shop local.
07:21It's exactly shop local.
07:22Right now we're in the midst of two predicaments.
07:37We need to build more houses and infrastructure
07:39and we need to cut our carbon emissions.
07:41But if we build more, we emit more.
07:43So to meet the challenges of the housing and climate crisis,
07:46we need to modernise.
07:48And modernising the construction industry also has to factor
07:51in an ageing workforce and skills shortage.
07:54Daniel McCrum is a structural engineer at UCD.
07:57We think about standard ways of doing construction.
08:01You know, you think of a masonry house
08:03where you have a bricklayer who's manually doing these processes
08:06and they're very hard to find those bricklayers anymore.
08:09As well as that, we have an ageing society.
08:11We're going to have less workers in the future.
08:13So on one side we have to rethink the way we're doing construction,
08:17but then on the other side is the climate emergency that we have.
08:22By 2030, we'll have to reduce our carbon emissions by 50%.
08:26If we think about concrete, which is the second most used material
08:29in the world after water, it's an excellent building material.
08:33But if you think about the materials that are required in concrete,
08:36we have aggregates, which are small stones.
08:39We have sand.
08:40They both have to come from quarries.
08:42Then we have water and then we have cement.
08:44That cement is produced using very high temperature processes using fossil fuels.
08:50So it has something we refer to as very high embodied carbon
08:53because the emissions are so large.
08:55So the question is, how do we change the traditional materials that we need to use,
08:59but also how do we bring in new materials and then new processes?
09:03What are those new methods?
09:04We're in a factory here today. We can see one of those types of construction.
09:07So that's offsite construction.
09:09We can build the entire modules of our building, you know, three dimensional modules.
09:13So we build the floor and the wall panels.
09:15We can bring them to the building site, stack them together to create our buildings.
09:19So this is kind of an indoor building site.
09:21It looks like a factory to us, but actually all the components of the houses are being made here
09:25to be transported to the site eventually.
09:27That's exactly it.
09:29Robotic technology is transforming construction.
09:33And Daniel's colleagues in UCD are developing new concrete mixes to be used by robots.
09:39And then the other side is, we'll be changing the structural thicknesses.
09:43So reducing the thickness of the walls because they're too strong at present.
09:46So we're reducing those down, doing the testing to verify that this works.
09:50Timber is an important material in modern methods of construction.
10:04As trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their wood.
10:09When timber is used in construction, this stored carbon remains locked within the building.
10:15We see timber frame construction here today.
10:19And last year that counted for 31% of all new build residential homes were built using timber frame.
10:25This is a massive transformation.
10:26You're saying for over 31% of new houses are being built with this method.
10:30We won't be able to say building something brick by brick anymore.
10:33Well, absolutely, because we'll be building them by panel by panel or module by module.
10:38Timber frame construction and the use of pre-manufactured components are just some of the ways the industry is improving efficiency
10:44and reducing emissions.
10:46Jason Van Hout is showing me new technologies being developed to enhance the potential of timber-based construction.
10:52What we're looking at now is a new prototype that we're looking to bring forward.
10:56It's a lightweight, innovative cladding system.
10:59It's basically a fiber cement board with computer-generated 3D printed brick.
11:04I mean, it feels and looks exactly like a traditional house.
11:07It's as strong as one as well.
11:09Yeah, this has been through a lot of climate testing, durability testing, fire and acoustics.
11:15And when I've seen some of these houses in our apartment blocks in construction,
11:18it's kind of amazing to see a crane just lifting in, you know, a whole floor, the side of the building.
11:23It just makes everything so much faster.
11:25Very much so.
11:26It is well documented.
11:27There's the diminishing labor workforce.
11:29So we've got to look at smarter and more efficient ways to deliver our houses.
11:33Now, that doesn't mean that the traditional construction workers will now be redundant.
11:38It's about evolving and re-skilling that workforce.
11:42With rising construction costs, price remains a key consideration.
11:47While this type of method may have higher upfront costs than a traditional build,
11:52by assembling key elements in a controlled environment,
11:55some weather and site issues can be avoided, allowing for faster, more efficient delivery.
12:00But you're a big company. What about this kind of small builders?
12:03Will this kind of technology be available to them as well?
12:06That's a key point.
12:07The more that people deliver and start bringing this sort of type of innovation to the market,
12:12it's going to become more prominent.
12:15And then once it becomes more prominent and used more often,
12:18then that's when you see prices coming down.
12:21Will we be able to reconcile all the construction and infrastructure
12:26that needs to be built with our carbon emission budget?
12:30I think we stand a good chance.
12:32Whether we'll achieve it all by 2030 or not, that remains to be seen.
12:36What I see with modern methods of construction, I think, over the next few years,
12:40is they won't be comparing themselves to traditional construction anymore.
12:44They're going to start competing amongst themselves for lower embodied carbon.
12:49So I think that's where the competition is going to be.
12:52This is the most amount of change I've seen in the industry in the last few years.
12:55And I think it's very exciting.
12:57And I think, not all of it, but mostly the industry is very energised by it.
13:02The truth is, traditional methods of construction and a business-as-usual approach to building
13:07are not going to cut it when it comes to meeting our housing and climate targets.
13:11The good news is, there are innovative solutions out there.
13:14And if the industry can embrace this progress, the results could be transformative.
13:32It has been said that one of the greenest buildings is the one that already exists.
13:52Geologist Patrick Weiss-Jackson studies Ireland's architecture
13:56to inform building conservation and restoration that's both accurate and visually seamless.
14:01He's taking me on a tour of Dublin city centre.
14:06So Patrick, what kind of stone are we looking at here?
14:10Well, this is a lovely yellow stone.
14:13And to be able to tell what it is, what a geologist would do,
14:16is they would want to get nice and close to it.
14:18First of all, I can feel it.
14:20And you can feel it's a little bit rough.
14:22Yeah, you can feel the texture.
14:23You've got a bit of texture to it.
14:24And then using the hand lens, if you get up nice and close,
14:27I can see sand grains in there.
14:29This is a sandstone from a place called Darleydale in Derbyshire.
14:33In Victorian times, they were very flamboyant.
14:35And the stone reflects that, the colour of the stone.
14:38If we move through college green, we'll go from yellows to reds to greys and to blacks.
14:44There are about 170 different stone types used in the city.
14:48All coming from different places?
14:49All coming from different places.
14:50All coming from different places.
14:51Well, as we move up the street, we will see the stone types actually change a little bit.
14:56And this is one of my favourite buildings.
14:58It was the National Bank.
15:00And it's built of Ballynock and granite.
15:03So West Wicklow.
15:05And what is unusual about this stone, in this case, it's been highly carved.
15:10You don't normally get it as highly carved as that.
15:13It's very beautiful.
15:14It is very beautiful.
15:15And it shows also that the banks had the money to spend on stone.
15:20Here we have another bank building.
15:22And the stone is different.
15:24If we get close to it, you will see that it's a limestone.
15:27And then for me, the really interesting thing that many people wouldn't bother looking at is this.
15:31This is the prints for the railings.
15:34Yes.
15:35And it looks a bit like black pudding.
15:36Yes, it does.
15:37With big crystals of quartz in here.
15:40And this is a rock from Besbrook in County Down.
15:44I suspect it was used as a sort of symbol for the fact this was the Ulster Bank.
15:49So could they get an Ulster stone in here?
15:52On my tour with Patrick, I'm struck that while statues on our figures from literature
15:56music and history, their stone opens up a window into a far older story
16:01of ancient fossilized creatures frozen in time.
16:05It just shows the type of environment these limestones were growing in.
16:09So this would have been quite warm tropical water where corals were thriving.
16:13Okay.
16:14Yeah, I love this.
16:15I think it's beautiful.
16:26Local rock gives our town their distinctive character and signature.
16:32But that stone can become weathered and damaged over time.
16:35So how do you go about restoring the facade or the structural integrity of these kind of historical and heritage buildings?
16:43You would have a survey done of the building.
16:45You'd look at the facade and you'd assess every block of stone within it.
16:50You'd work out the three dimensional shape.
16:53You'd look at whether it was decayed on the surface.
16:56The first step of any building restoration is working out where the original stone came from.
17:01And Patrick is taking me to Trinity's public theatre.
17:04It was built in the late 18th century, but its story goes back much further in geological time.
17:10So this is an example here of a West Wicklow Leinster granite.
17:16This was originally formed during the Devonian period when there was a collision between two continents and an ocean disappeared.
17:23Wow.
17:24And so you got the land masses colliding.
17:27Materials pushed down and melted and lots of granite came up.
17:31Okay.
17:32And the Leinster granite, which runs from Kalini all the way down to Waterford, is just one huge batholith, one huge mass of granite.
17:41It's not all the same.
17:42And so we have to look at this stone and try to characterize it.
17:47By studying tiny details in the stone, Patrick seeks to trace its origin.
17:52I'm about to get an even closer view of our geological past with the use of a special microscope.
17:58Amy, here we have our petrological microscope with our thin section of granite in place.
18:04Mm-hmm.
18:05And when you look down the eyepieces, you will see three different minerals within that.
18:09They come up in different colors.
18:10Definitely.
18:11And the grey is the quartz.
18:12The stripy is the feldspar.
18:14And then the lovely bluey green orangey mineral, that's the mica.
18:19So it allows us to really look at this stone in more detail.
18:23That's fantastic.
18:25The next step is some good old fashioned detective work.
18:38By studying handwritten records and documents in the college archives,
18:42and comparing those to old maps from the 18th century,
18:45Patrick is able to narrow down the search to three stone quarries in Wicklow.
18:50So one of these stone quarries is where the stone comes from.
18:55But you have to work out exactly which one.
18:57Yes.
18:58And so we go to another piece of research.
19:00And here we have a paper by a man called Peter Brook.
19:05He mapped the northern part of the Leinster granite.
19:10What we're interested in here is type two, the equi granular, which is this.
19:16So we see Ballynocken here.
19:17If we've decided, yes, we definitely know that the stone here in Trinity came from Blessington and Golden Hill.
19:23Then if we go down to Ballynocken and to Granabeg further south, we're in the right unit.
19:29It's just fascinating work.
19:31And then, of course, you know, we want to learn about the people involved,
19:36the stonemasons, stone carvers, the architects and so on that have gone towards building this.
19:42So it's a jigsaw puzzle.
19:46Granite from Ballynocken in County Wicklow was used in hundreds of historic Dublin buildings,
19:51and is now being used to help restore them.
19:55The McEvoys have been quarrying granite since the 1840s,
19:58and John McEvoy is a fifth generation stonemason.
20:01Hi, Amy. Nice to meet you.
20:04So, John, how do you go about figuring out what piece of stone to use
20:08or what to use to restore a thing with?
20:10Well, the first thing we do is we try to organise a site visit
20:14so we can see the stone in place and see what way it is.
20:17And then you have your grain to consider and then you have your colour
20:22because with quarrying practices, the deeper you go down,
20:26the whiter, brighter, harder, more dense the stone becomes.
20:30But we're talking about matching stone at a time where the quarries were mainly surface quarries
20:36because water pumps weren't readily available.
20:39Electricity wasn't here at all.
20:41Then we look at what finishes on that stone.
20:43So many different finishes can be put on it from a punched finish to a draft finish.
20:49And they call this rough ashlar finish where it's all left like a natural rock finish.
20:54And then we will match that.
20:56Now, there's no machines to match all those old finishes today,
20:59so a lot of them are still done here by hand.
21:02So it's a very hard, tough game.
21:04But it's a very rewarding game because, you know, when you create something and you make something from scratch
21:12and you know you've been shown something by your uncle or your father or your grandfather
21:17that they used to do and you know that you were putting a little bit of what they thought into that piece.
21:23It's a magical feeling.
21:25We're the custodians of our buildings.
21:28And there's over 600 buildings in Dublin that have used Ballynock and Granite.
21:32That's a massive amount of buildings.
21:34The skeleton of Dublin city is Ballynock and Granite.
21:37That's the way we look on it.
21:39So if we don't maintain this and maintain it to the highest standard by using the stone where the building's DNA is,
21:46well, what you have then is you might be mixing it with imported stones which don't fit our climate.
21:52They don't look like our stone.
21:54And you'll end up with this patchwork quilt effect, which isn't very nice to look at.
21:59By using the original stone, we're also then preserving the culture and the craftsmanship that went into making that stone.
22:07That is really important.
22:08By utilising this material, there are opportunities to train people in these crafts.
22:15So they're not lost.
22:17There is another good reason.
22:18We have to consider the carbon cost.
22:22So if we bring in granite from the continent or indeed from China, what's the carbon cost of getting it here as against bringing it from West Wicklow?
22:32We need to protect our buildings, whether that's honouring centuries of history or using technology to look to the future.
22:40It takes time and passion and expertise to sustain and preserve our built environment.
22:57That's our 10 things to know about building Ireland.
23:00Next time, we're exploring the science of our increasingly severe storms.
23:04our national security team, and our national security team is probably going to be running in some of the cities.
23:06Thanks, guys.
23:07Thanks.
23:08Thanks, guys.
23:09You're welcome.
23:11Bye-bye.
23:12Thanks, guys.
23:13Thanks, guys.
23:14We've got to be here.
23:15Good luck.
23:16You're welcome.
23:17Bye-bye.
23:18Thanks.
23:19Bye-bye.
23:23Bye-bye.
23:25Bye-bye.
23:27Bye-bye.
23:28Bye-bye.
23:29Bye-bye.
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