Build Tight, Ventilate Right!
Tor Høie
An innovator and consultant, Tor has worked within the Construction Industry around the world for 35 years specialising in innovative raw materials product development, environmental effects and controls and energy efficiencies for buildings. In that time he has assembled and refined what we believe to be the most universally useful process for managing the details of constructing efficiently, through the Integrated Design Process©. Tor has been very fortunate to have the opportunity to have studied many different building systems and learn from some of the brightest minds in the industry. This education has enabled him to take the best tips and techniques from other experts and systems to create some of his own and then adapt the result to the changing technology of the twenty-first century - bringing forth low-carbon energy efficient solutions for clients.
Having spent decades researching materials to reduce environmental impact, Tor has also done an extensive evaluation of the environmental impact of not only ordinary building materials but other factors as well, such as the capital equipment brought in through new regulatory requirements to make buildings more energy efficient. It is not just the raw materials that have undergone intense scrutiny… Every step in the design process has been through a calculated evaluation of the potential environmental impact. This includes a thorough examination of the mining and manufacturing processes, transport and logistics, with consideration given to where the product is made, how far it has to travel and whether it will pollute the internal or external environment.
Entering the UK in ’93, Tor was at first shocked and dismayed at housing stock being built to below-par levels of insulation and energy efficiencies compared to the rest of the northern EU housing stock. Tor lobbied varied UK Government parties towards effecting change within the industry, passing along experience and informational data supporting his ‘dramatic’ revelations which he considered ‘just common sense.’ Way before this was recognised as a requirement for future-proofing housing stock against CO2 emissions, fuel poverty et al, Tor arguably was the first to coin the term ‘fabric-first’ before it became commonly used within the industry.
Climate Change spurred various governmental actions that led to the industry taking action towards proper efficiencies regardless of whether someone agreed with the arguments in regards to Climate Change; Tor managed to convince most that in the end "It’s just the right thing to do!"
At the beginning of the new Century, Tor invented the multi-award winning low-carbon Mantle® Building System© and founded Mantle Panel, Ltd. Later, detailed analysis by WS Atkins (now Atkins), the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and the University of Bath confirmed that the Embodied Carbon Dioxide (CO2e [kgCO2/m³]) content of the Mantle Building System is dramatically lower than competitor building systems. Along with super-insulation performance, air-tightness and energy efficiencies this culminated in the granting of, amongst other awards, the renowned BCE Environmental Leadership Product and Service Commendation Award in 2012.
After leaving Mantle Panel Ltd, Tor has been pursuing an even better, higher rated building system with more economics of scale, being able to provide not only an incredibly lower carbon structural shell, but the actual cost-effective solutions that work with this new air-tight shell to lower costs for the developer/self-builder while ensuring the lowest ongoing running costs available within the industry.
Through working with clients, contractors, developers, Architects, designers, and regulatory bodies, Tor and his associates at Thir13en have developed unparalleled contacts to assist clients with the morass of entanglement one often incurs whilst trying to understand all the new parameters within the new building regulations and the construction industry itself - promoting unique insights into building beyond expected parameters and saving his clients both money and frustration.