Respect for the environment, RE 2020: steel joinery has arguments!

At Descasystem, the commitment to the environment is not recent with a material, steel, perfectly in tune with these regulatory changes. Moreover, the new RE 2020 regulations do not imply any upheaval for Jansen steel joinery. Descasystem has and already had, as a distributor, products compatible with these new requirements.

For Laurent Milano, head of sales: “The essential is there, the products exist and this RE 2020 is a great opportunity. It makes it possible to further highlight our know-how as a technical product line designer in a specific environment, that of carpentry. »

With a reputedly more neutral carbon footprint, with this new regulation, architects will no doubt turn even more towards steel and its intrinsic qualities.

Descasystem steel meets RE 2020

For the moment, the RE 2020 is intended to apply to the construction of new buildings, it will soon impact the renovation sites on which Descasystem is already present. The steel joinery of the manufacturer Jansen is already equipped to meet the requirements of the new energy regulations.

Reinforced thermal insulation: Jansen joinery steel is first and foremost a champion of thermal insulation. Thus, solutions from the Janisol range, Janisol Arte in fine series or Janisol HI (High Insulation) perfectly meet thermal regulations. The thermal insulation coefficients of steel are much more efficient than those of aluminium.

Unequaled durability: Before talking about recycling steel, Olivier Audigue, Specification Manager, likes to “emphasize the fact that steel has a much longer lifespan than other materials. With public building doors made of aluminium, for example, deterioration occurs much earlier. It is then necessary to change the equipment. Steel doors have a much longer lifespan. We can also straighten them, repaint them if necessary”. The durability of the steel is far superior to the ten-year guarantee associated with Jansen joinery.

A 100% recyclable material: Steel products from the Jansen brand are in any case fully recyclable products. The recycling channels for steel have existed for several decades, they are very structured, whereas for aluminium, the recycling channels are much more recent. Furthermore, the advantage of steel is that it can be recycled indefinitely for other applications without changing its mechanical characteristics. In France and Europe, 62% of steel is recycled in this way.

A reduced carbon footprint: If steel has a lower carbon footprint than that of aluminium, this is firstly linked to its production conditions. Steel is much less energy intensive. For Laurent Milano, Descasystem Jansen sales manager, “steel is very interesting, because production is carried out using electric furnaces from recycled scrap metal. We do not end up with casting systems involving the use of coke and heavy pollution”. Then, to produce 1 ton of steel, only 1 ton of iron is needed. On the other hand, it takes no less than 4 tons of bauxite to obtain 2 tons of alumina, from which 1 ton of aluminum is extracted. Finally, when it takes the equivalent of 9 months of consumption by one person to produce steel, it takes 12, or 30% more for aluminium. To make one tonne of aluminum, you also need 125 million liters of water, whereas it doesn't take any to make steel. It is also important to bear in mind that RE 2020 encourages us to consider the building as a whole. We must now think of the building as a whole to understand its carbon footprint. With its solutions, Descasystem allows architects and economists not to weigh down the whole in terms of ecological impact. It is possible to design a building with steel joinery that is virtuous and that meets current standards.

The association of larger glazed parts since steel also benefits from much greater inertia than that of aluminium, which makes it possible to offer much finer and larger joinery, which therefore consumes much less material. It is then also the possibility of having more and more important glazed parts to be able to benefit from the heat of the solar radiation inside the house. This is what Laurent Milano explains: “Steel makes it possible to produce much finer profiles than with aluminium. We can then associate larger glazing and let in more light. We will thus have systems with 60 mm of mass-view while the aluminum will perhaps be at 100 mm. This plays on the greater clearness of the glazing with steel. This is one of the orientations of the RE 2020 regulations”.

What does RE 2020 change for Jansen steel joinery?

The new regulations ultimately had little impact on Descasystem. The products exist but it was necessary to indicate more clearly their compatibility with RE2020. When the Janisol range was created 30 years ago, there was no question of the thermal transmission coefficient. Today, it is essential to justify it in order to respond, for example, to a CCTP (Special technical clauses book). Jansen has therefore completely updated its documentation.

As for the FDES sheets for Jansen products, they have already been drafted and will soon be updated and available to all market players: architects, construction economists, metalworkers, etc. For Ludovic Loew, “taking into consideration the entire life cycle of steel, from extraction to recycling, in these FDES sheets, the material has a carbon footprint that is significantly lower than its competitors”.

An old approach that is part of Jansen's DNA

It is important, for Laurent Milano, to remember that “Jansen was the first, more than 30 years ago, to develop a system with thermal break in steel”. Jansen's birthplace is Switzerland, a very demanding country in terms of the environment. This is why the manufacturer has always been very attentive to reducing the ecological impact of the production of its steel profiles. A production building itself is 0 carbon emissions, self-sufficient in terms of energy consumption.

The German market, leader at the time, was also very impactful with a lead on regulatory and ecological aspects. Across the Rhine, there was already strong demand for its thermally broken steel products.

And since then, steel has continued to improve its performance. The latest important development for Olivier Audigue is the creation of the Janisol HI (high insulation) range: "it is a range with very high thermal insulation, very present in northern Europe and which is increasingly more in France. It is the perfect demonstration of this evolution of our steel profiles with a thermal transmission coefficient of only 0,8 W/m²K, lower than that of double glazing”.

Thus, according to Laurent Milano, "on a typology of carpentry that existed 30 years ago and that of today, we go from a thermal transmission coefficient of 2,7 W/m²K to 1,3 today ". The quality of the material remains quite similar, it is the steel shells and the thermal bridge breakers that have evolved. As for the glazing associated with the joinery, it has also greatly improved its performance.

Local production

Another major interest, from an environmental point of view, of steel joinery is the local nature of their production. Olivier Audigue likes to recall that “Jansen products are generally made by local craftsmen, whereas aluminum is linked to prefabrication with trucks that travel around France or come from abroad. With steel, we are still very artisanal and very local. We don't circulate products over thousands of kilometers across Europe”. The steel profiles come from Switzerland, they are then stored in Lyon before being sent to the metalworkers who work locally.

Jansen joinery ready to welcome the new trend of triple glazing!

The RE 2020, by seeking values ​​of the order of 0,8 W/m²K, tends to increasingly impose the triple glazing solution. To increase the performance of the glazing, it is more and more often necessary to increase its thickness. However, the Janisol ranges are perfectly adapted to integrate this type of solution. Steel indeed offers, according to Laurent Milano, the necessary characteristics: “To fit these glazings into the joinery, it is essential to have increasingly deep profiles. For these glass products, we offer with Jansen in terms of frame solutions with relevant thermal transmission coefficients”. The Janisol HI range in particular has been specifically designed to integrate this triple glazing.