Syspro member supplies activated precast concrete
elements for hockey champions

Austria‘s best hockey club has already gathered more than 90 championship titles in its trophy cabinet. Quite currently, SV Arminen located in the district of Hernals provides numerous world champions – Austria‘s men clinched the world championship title at the last tournament in South Africa and the women came home with silver. The hockey players from the Alpine Republic are a real authority, with the players – male and female – of SV Arminen in Vienna being the core of all Austrian national teams.

„We do not only want to maintain this status but want to build it up,“ says Stephan Scharner, Arminen‘s President, when asked for the reason of the huge construction site at the club‘s premises. Here, not only the large hockey field was equipped with artificial turf and top technology – the very big dream of all club members has become reality now, since October 2023. After a construction period of only eight months, SV Arminen got a new hockey hall built that sets new standards in this sport also in terms of sustainability.

The investment amount of about 5.8 million Euros was raised by the City of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Government with 2.7 million Euros each and the club itself with 400,000 Euros.

Climate-friendly concept

For the construction of the building with the large playing and training hall, eventually, climate-related and ecological aspects plaid a particular role. Starting from the energy-saving LED floodlighting through to an extensive greening of the hall roof, rainwater utilization for irrigation of the outdoor facilities, electric power from photovoltaic and hot water from solar collectors, this new sports facility became a real flagship project.

Constant temperature control thanks to HVAC floor slabs

A special equipment detail comes from the MABA Fertigteilindustrie GmbH. The company, a subsidiary of the Kirchdorfer Group, as the major Austrian precast concrete producer is also member of the Syspro Gruppe Betonbauteile. From their Gerasdorf location less than 20 km away, MABA supplied 300 m² of industrially prefabricated HVAC floor slabs for the hall construction project in Vienna.

In contrast to the activated floor slabs produced in a cast-in-situ concrete process on the construction site, the heating and/or cooling registers in these HVAC floor slabs are situated significantly closer to the surface. Below the reinforcement, they allow quick adjustment of the heating and cooling performance. In this way, a comfortable indoor temperature can be maintained constantly over several hours. This flexibly adjustable temperature control achieves an overall outstanding energy efficiency.

„This technology, already in operation in other projects, provides substantial advantages in terms of energy efficiency and sustainability,“ explains MABA Sales Manager Thomas Plesnar the development of the innovative product.

The outcome is convincing now because of its especially energy-efficient design. Owing to the uniform temperature generated across extensive areas in the interior spaces and the high proportion of radiation in heating mode, a comfortable feeling at a substantially lower room air temperature is achieved with the aid of the HVAC floor slab technology in comparison to conventional heating systems. At the same time, the energy consumption for the building is minimized significantly as well. The special effect: At an indoor air temperature generated by this method, the actual subjective temperature sensation is one to 2 °C higher. As a result, the entire energy demand required for air conditioning of the hall can be reduced by six to 12 %.

Exact assembly specifications due to prefabrication technology

The prefabricated construction material made by the Kirchdorfer Group also convinces in terms of workmanship and assembly. Thus, the HVAC floor slab is already provided with the flexural tensile strength in longitudinal and transverse direction required for assembly as well as final state. In addition to the pipe registers manufactured at the factory, supplied modules were also integrated into the precast floor slab.

Along with the HVAC floor slabs, Kirchdorfer Group also supplied 15 activated precast concrete elements for the seat grandstand and five stairways. The customized precast concrete elements of the Rauter precast specialist located in Styrian, another subsidiary of the Kirchdorfer Group, faced logistics and the assembly team with particular challenges: Only limited access to the project and a tolerance of about one centimeter required exact precision work, given the material widths of 139 to 239 centimeters and unit weights of up to ten tons.

Market launch with future prospects

Michael Wardian, General Manager of the Kirchdorfer Group, regards the premiere application of the HVAC floor slab in the Vienna hockey hall, in particular, as a clear mandate for a future-orientated construction industry: „The advantages of industrial prefabrication such as optimum adaptability, integrated building services and resource-efficient processes are essential for a sustainable method of construction,“ he states as overall conclusion on the use of the elements in Vienna‘s new hockey hall.