About the Building

Royal Seal City is a high quality project by Yinfeng Real Estate in Qingdao. It was awarded an excellent rating at design stage by BREEAM NC 2016, and is the first BREEAM excellent project in Qingdao.
Yinfeng Real Estate Group adheres to the philosophy of “integrity, excellence, quality and eternity”, giving priority to people’s living comfort and happiness, sticking to an innovation-driven sustainable business strategy of, using energy-saving and water-saving techniques, striving to conserve energy and reduce emissions, and save fresh water resources.

The project covers an area of 65777.11m2, being about 230m long from north to south and about 290m long from east to west. It consists of 12 dwellings, namely 4 low rises and 8 high rises. It is located at the intersection of Haier Road and Hong Kong East Road. It is surrounded by Fushan, Wushan and Laoshan Mountain. To its south is a 3-kilometer golden coastline of Stone Old Man, and its east is the core of Jinjialing Financial City. Liqun Jinding Square is adjacent to it. Shilaoren Beach Station  Metro Line  is within walking distance.

LCC and LCA assessments were carried out during the design stage. One Click LCA & LCA calculators were used to compare energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of different materials. Overall, the Building Energy Performance Ratio is excellently 89%. At the same time, the project selects energy-efficient technologies such as an  elevator with a VVVF motor with variable speed, average lamp efficacy higher than 55 lm/W, with a control device which will automatically go into standby mode during off-peak hours. A Solar Photothermal System of 185m2 is located on the roofs of buildings NO.5 – NO.8, whose heat production is heat water for the users. The solar system of this project replaces conventional energy up to 40298kg and reduces CO2 emissions by 99535kg.
The project uses sinking green space, permeable pavements, and storage tanks to collect rainwater. This water is reused for road washing, green irrigation and garage washing to reduce the utilization of traditional water sources. The collected rainwater cover 100% of the above washing and irrigation needs.

Why did the building undergo BREEAM certification?

1. BREEAM has been used due to the worldwide recognition and reputation of  BREEAM. After studying and visiting international BREEAM-certified projects, we, with our own vision of green building development, believe that the BREEAM system is comprehensive, flexible, and advancing with the times in green building certification.
2. Modern people choose comfort, health and convenience. Through an analysis of BREEAM-certified residential projects on the market, we found out that BREEAM-certified projects are the most popular among consumers and sell out faster. When a developer adopts the BREEAM certification system, it shows their sense of social and environmental responsibility.
3.  Improving the indoor environment-during the design stage, the project adopted lighting and view simulation to meet all lighting requirements and 99% view requirements, so as to provide residents with an indoor environment of adequate daylighting. Furthermore,this project adopts advanced air conditioning filter units to prevent pollution like PM2.5 & PM10 from entering the rooms. The distance between the inlet and outlet is 19m, and the air inlet is 12m away from the nearest road of the city, avoiding air cross-contamination, thus providing clean air to the residents. The project also carries out thermal comfort analysis to ensure temperature and air-current speed of the main spaces are comfortable.
4. Reducing Runoff-the project has set up a storage volume of 864m3 by adopting technical measures of a sponge city such as sinking green space, permeable pavement, storage tank, grassed swales, to meet the requirements of annual total runoff volume control of the project. While beautifying the environment of the site, it ensures stable circulation of the groundwater level in the region.
5. Environmental protection- energy savings and emission reduction-This project uses IESVE for energy consumption simulation. After many calculations, materials with low thermal conductivity, low heat gain coefficient and transmissivity and high energy efficiency ratio temperature regulating equipment are selected, reducing 9.15% energy consumption and 9.7% carbon dioxide compared with the benchmark building. The Overall Building Energy Performance Ratio is  89%.
6. Green Construction- Before the construction, we decided on the list of site monitoring managers during the construction and wrote down a green construction plan. In order to reduce the problem like littering and random disposal of waste at the construction site, a specialist has been employed to manage the waste on the construction site to achieve effective use of resources and reduce waste. The energy and water consumption during the construction process have also been assigned to a manager to track and record.
7. Environment of the Site- At the beginning of Concept Design stage, we appointed a SQE for the site assessment to create environmental protection measures. Furthermore, in order to build a good living environment and make full use of the  geographical location close to mountains and rivers, a professional garden designer was also hired to carry out a landscape design for the site.

Green Strategy

Royal Seal City is a project situated in an urban centre, with well-developed transportation hub around, and a wide selection of amenities. However, this presents a challenge to the construction to the construction process, in particular from construction noise, site dusting, and the decrease of green ratio. At the same time, the trend of global warming has caused sea level rise. Qingdao is a coastal city. In the future, seawater intrusion and encroachment will be prone to occur. Along with the flood risk, is an impact on fresh water utilization. The selection and use of building materials is also one of the main factors affecting the environment. Excess and lack of materials will both cause inconvenience to the construction. Construction materials that have not been certified by standard systems will adversely affect human health and building safety.

The BREEAM certification system has a complete set of requirements on waste management during construction and environmental protection. It worked as a key reference for the plan and design of construction process when we discussed with the constructor. The constructor developed a perfect waste management plan, a commitment to protect the green space on site and on-site construction management plan.

Water Saving- When selecting sanitary and water appliances, BREEAM level 5 water efficient components were chosen to reduce water wasted at the very beginning. Compared with ordinary water appliances, 30% of water could be saved. A water pipe is installed a main water meter, while each household has a sub-meter. The water meter adopts a pulse output device, which can be linked to a BMS system in the future, which is convenient for users to check the water consumption and enhance their awareness of water saving. Furthermore, this project adopts micro-irrigation techniques, equipped with soil moisture sensor. There will be a 35% to 75% reduction of water consumption by adopting micro-irrigation techniques.

Benefits of assessing to BREEAM

1. The project has outstanding performance in terms of water and energy consumption in the later stage, thus reducing the cost of its operation phase and protecting the environment at the same time. In current society, the public, are paying more attention to energy saving, emissions reductions and saving of fresh water resources. With its outstanding performance on these 3 aspects, this project would be favourable for potential tenants.
2. BREEAM provides comprehensive guidance on transportation, material selection, water monitoring safety, and air quality in the community, thus ensuring the personal safety and health of the residents.
3.  The use of the BREEAM certification system can help us to take full account of energy saving and other sustainable development issues of the building right from the concept design stage. so that the main teams in the later stage can participate more during the green design and the construction, making the communication smoother. It also enables the building to fully reflect the spirit of sustainable development during use in the future.