This is an essay concerning the density of the city. An increasing amount of today?s cities have a shortage of space available for the erection of new buildings and settlements, especially in areas close to the city-centre. New buildings and settlements are therefore often found in the outskirts of the city, resulting in long distances between work and living for many people. These long distances are a waste of limited resources and are inconsistent with the vision of the sustainable city.The challenge for the future is to insert new buildings and settlements in the existing city-structure and in this way reduce the distances between different city-functions.The density of the city can be increased in two different ways; by inserting new buildings between existing ones or by extension existing buildings, for example by an additional floor.

Today green tree retention, together with leaving dead wood, is a common practice with the aim to reduce negative impacts on biodiversity and environment due to clear-felling. To better understand whether this conservation practice also makes a long-term difference, it is important to know what happens to these trees after harvest. Few studies have made an assessment of what happens to retention trees over a longer time period. In this study I inventoried retention trees that were left at clear-cuts six, twelve and eighteen years ago. I carried out a re-inventory of 57 retention patches (divided into free-standing tree groups, small swamp forests and edge zones) and free standing dead trees, spread over 25 previous clear-cuts in central Sweden.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how to reduce the high, and every decade raising, pre-clearance cost. The pre-clearance is today carried out with a brush saw and paid per labour hour. All small trees not suitable for pulpwood are removed to simplify the later work of the harvester. The study compares the economic results from thinning of four parcels each treated differently regarding harsh or light pre-clearance and extraction of only pulpwood, or both pulpwood and fuel wood. In this type of spruce stand the study indicates that a lighter pre-clearance, followed up with both pulpwood and a fuel wood extraction, has a much better economy than the traditional method of hard pre-clearance and only pulpwood extraction..

This final thesis is performed on commission of Torsby forestry administration, Stora Enso Skog. Stora Enso Skog is one of the major forestry companies of Sweden. The main business area is located in and around the region of Bergslagen. During the last decade the practice of forest management has rapidly changed due to a new forest legislation. The new law has resulted in that the production goal is equal to the environmental goal within forestry.

Background: The standard of living should be the same for everyone, whether the apartment is placed in an old or new building. The residential properties that were built from 1965 until 1974 is now beginning to become old and in need of restoration. The financial crisis during the nineties contributed to the lack of maintenance on the buildings in Sweden. As the public buildings gets older more and more defects occurs. The coordination and maintenance will therefore have a more significant role in the housing company ?s work.The increasing interest about how old a building can be, attract much attention.

Sweden recently changed the national regulation of chimney sweeping. This study has two purposes. The first purpose is to evaluate the effect of this reform to see if the new regulation has led to an effect in terms of increased chimney fires in single-family houses and for the wood-burning and oil-burning stoves, respectively. The second purpose is an updating of a previous study (Mattsson 1994) of analysis of society´s benefits and costs of different alternative sweeping frequencies for wood-burning and oil-burning stoves. This study also has a secondary purpose to examine the extent to which the local sweeping rules vary with climate conditions.  Mattsson, based on his results, proposed that the sweeping requirements for oil-burning stoves should be reduced from twice a year to once every second year and for wood-burning stoves the sweeping should be reduced from four times to once each year.

In my thesis I have sand blasted different type of woods - ring-porous and diffuseporous deciduous tree species and conifers - to show different results depending on the species, the direction of the grain and the effects of surface treatment of a blasted surface.The results of my tests were sometimes unexpected, such as that the sand from blasting almost completely disappeared, that all wood surfaces after blasting exhibited a much lighter or paler surface than before and that the diffuse-porous tree species showed differences in hardness between the beginning and end of annual rings.By creating a library of different kinds of wood and sandblasted surface treatment, I have created a reference bank that I will be able to use me in the manufacturing of interiors, furniture and other objects..

Sweden has formulated ambitious energy goals which signify that by year 2050 the energy usage should be halved. One of the objectives is the reduction of energy usage by 20% by year 2020 and that it should be compared to the usage of energy from 1995. In parallel with increased energy requirements for buildings the demand on housing conservation, by highlighting also buildings from the last 50 years as part of the building heritage, continues to enhance, which in theory means that there is a conflict between these.The law will never be able to point out unique buildings and PBL (planning and building act) is not especially concrete. The National Housing Board has tried to make this more concrete by the new BBR regulations though there are still an enormous variety of interpretations.This report deals with the conflict between conservation requirements and additional insulation of the building envelope and is limited to multi-residential buildings built between the years 1945 and 1975. It is the stock with the greatest energy consumption and that is where the big challenge lies.

Dead wood is important for many species. The amount of coarse dead wood (diameter >10 cm) is much lower in managed forest than in unmanaged forests. Stumps constitute the largest proportion of the volume of coarse dead wood in managed forests. Since stump harvest for biofuel may increase, the amount of dead wood will decrease even more, which may threaten biodiversity. The first aim of this study was to compare the amounts of fine woody debris (FWD, .

The starting point for this master thesis was the product of the company "Humlegården", which allows its tenants in office buildings to follow their electricity consumption in real time, through their Smartphone's. The idea that resulted from that application is to investigate if it is possible to direct the tenants in office buildings to reduce their energy consumptions, but also to be satisfied with the indoor environment. This work addresses the factors which are the main energy consumers in office buildings. It addresses legal requirements and standards which are important to follow in order to achieve good thermal comfort in buildings. Some of them are physical climate factors like thermal environment, air quality and lightning.

The aim of this study was to quantify the productivity and the costs of different harvesting systems (teams), containing harvesters equipped with accumulating harvester heads and forwarders, in first commercial thinnings were an integrated harvest of pulpwood and energy wood were performed. In the beginning the plan was to study and measure 20 sites before and after harvest. Due to storms during the summer of 2010, complete data could only be obtained from 8 of these 20 sites. Seven of these sites were privately owned and one was owned by UPM, all of the sites had been pre-commercially thinned. The mean stem density before harvest was 2578 stems per ha and the mean stem volume was 0.074 m3solid over bark.On average 1518 stems/ha was harvested.

This thesis concerns to investigate renovations of existing buildings aiming at enabling energy efficiency, from a conservation and restoration perspective. This includes performing case studies of three projects in the Gothenburg area where renovations has been done and an analysis of directives raised by the EU and later implemented by the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, Boverket. In addition to these, regulations enforced by the Swedish law, related to the topic, have been considered.The investigated projects in this case were the housing cooperative Välten in Brämaregården, the Solar Buildings in Järnbrott and Gårdsten as well as Katjas Gata 119 at Backa Röd. In order to measure and compare the results of these projects a comparison between the pre- and post-restoration energy consumption have been performed. To capture additional perspectives the grading system Operation Kungsörn has been applied.Regarding the comparison of energy consumption the renovation of Katjas Gata 119 was found preferable but showed in my view lacking attention to the cultural heritage of the area.

This master thesis is an in-depth study of an existing heating system at a household cooperative in Uppsala that has been converted from district heating to a bedrock heat pump system. The study focuses on an economical system optimisation of the building?s complete heating system. The aim was to determine how well a heat pump system in large buildings actually work, find out possible ways to optimize the existing system and point out important system parameters for new heat pump installations in larger buildings.The project points out a possible energy cost reduction of 45 % without investment and further cost reductions with equipment investments. A reduction by 30 % is possible by improvements in the regulation system and 15 % is possible by maintaining the brine system.

The purpose with this project is to explore and verify three renovating systems for Miljonprogrammet (common expression forbuildings constructed during the years 1965-1975 when over a million houses where built in Sweden) to take measure to thelargely transmission losses of these buildings. Many of the buildings from this period have similar constructions and thereforethe same techniques can be used to renovate several of them. This project only considers the climate scale, although thereare many more factors to concern for to efficient the buildings of Miljonprogrammet.This thesis presents examples of renovations carried out using two of the three renovation systems.The essay presents a reference house of choice on which we apply the three systems and calculate the new U-values,consumption of energy and the investment costs. The new U-values the building is given is matched to the values ofrecommendation for passive houses. Our reference house is a two story apartment building, located in the village ofLammhult, with brick facades at the ends and plaster at the long sides.

The design of the building envelope affects the energy consumption of a building. As the energy requirements for new buildings are becoming more demanding, the performance of the building envelope must be improved. Energy efficiency and durability are important attributes to consider.This report includes investigations of the building envelope, moisture and passive solar energy. It is based on the analysis of two different buildings with different designs. These buildings stand as reference for two of the companies who are working on a new, climate smart, residential area in Uppsala, Sweden.Studies and analyses on energy consumption and moisture transportation were made.