The Beskydy Paragliding Center works in harmony with nature and emphasizes the use of modern technologies. The building with a green roof uses rainwater and well water, and heats it with solar energy. Smart software linked to the reservation system activates and reheats occupied rooms in winter. The building was self-constructed for about four months, says owner Dalibor Carbol in an interview.
Flight Park Javorový in the Beskydy is the largest paragliding training center in the Czech Republic. What all do you offer?
Our basic activity is teaching paragliding in the Czech Republic and abroad. With our training products with our own training method, we compare ourselves with the biggest paragliding schools around the world and we are rightly proud of it. Basic training in the Beskydy begins in mid-April and usually ends in mid-October, our training program abroad runs year-round.
Of course, we also run a popular tandem flying center. It is most used in the summer season. To the rooms Flight Park Javorovy accommodates a maximum of twenty guests, there is also space for tents.
The buildings of the center were designed in harmony with nature. Where did the idea come from?
For many years, I have wanted quality facilities for our courses, the production of paragliders and the service of paragliding equipment. In 2017, such a project was successfully implemented right next to the landing area and, in addition, at the parking lot of the lower station of the Javorový cable car, which is the busiest terrain in the Czech Republic. So the absolute ideal for our work.
Then followed long hours and days of browsing the site of the future building, drawing the first designs, meetings with the designer, searching for a suitable structure. It was also interesting to look for a solution for our own system servicing this building and our services.
The project was designed and implemented by self-help. How many people participated in it?
Construction took four months until approval. We built continuously with three to four people, and our instructors, tandem pilots and also many people from the ranks of pilots who studied with us or trained with us somewhere abroad and felt that they wanted to help came to help us on occasion.
What “green” elements does the center have?
Nothing lasts forever, so when choosing building materials, we also focused on their possible easy disassembly and the possibility of recycling. Of course, we want the building to last as long as possible, but when someone dismantles it, it should have a cleaner solution.
The wooden structures used are not filled with anything, the diffusely open wooden construction ensures its ventilation. We did not use screws in the main structure, but classic nails, the floors are covered with standard boards from below.
We laid epoxy floors ourselves in the dining room, study room, corridors, toilets and showers. We mixed sifted sand into the epoxy, which was left after concreting the floors. We also used this leftover sand for a children’s sandpit created from scraps of construction beams.
We created the grass roof by using the remaining hardened insulating cotton wool stacked on top of the geotextile and mixed with a mixture of clay and ceramsite on the surface.
The outdoor tables and chairs, as well as the indoor club bar and the skeleton of the kitchen, are created from larch remnants and offcuts from the perimeter terraces. Many similar alternative solutions are used on the building. Upcycling is an important topic for us.
How do you use water in the center?
The main building of Flight Park Javorový is built on a stream that was trumpeted long ago. The piping was created because someone needed to divert the flow of a mountain stream in order to build a swimming pool with an adjacent hotel in its original bed, and Třinec resolved the debacle of that project by transporting slag from the iron works and building a parking lot for the cable car.
I have no illusions about the purity of such a solution. Nevertheless, we managed to find a source of clean spring water and supply the well with it. We use this water for indoor and outdoor showers and toilets, and it also includes an 800-liter gravity-fed water heater on the roof of the building. By filling in this solar water heating in the early morning hours, we also smooth out the well’s withdrawal curve and thus reduce its unwanted depletion in drier periods.
We divert rainwater from the roof to two sides. One drains into a creek and the other irrigates an old maple tree that is built into the first-floor patio around the room entrances.
Smart software helps you with building management, how does it work?
We have created a system that consists of different user roles and their assigned areas of competence for inputs and service functions. From various schemes of work with energies in all parts of the building, from measurements of real consumption and from safety functions. For this, we have created a system for managing a shared club bar, personal accounts and a reservation accommodation system.
We have system-controlled sockets, installed temperature sensors, door and window opening sensors, chip locks for entrances to accommodation rooms, motion sensors, consumption meters, there are also security cameras in common areas with stored property. We store the data in our own device, none of it leaves the building, the SMS gateway informs about possible dangerous situations.
For example, how does the connection of the reservation system with starting the heating only in reserved rooms work?
By registering in the reservation system, the room is also activated with an entry chip, stored in a coded mailbox, at a specified time before arrival. If necessary, the room and the water start to heat up. Several user settings with different temperature curves for the entire 24-hour stay are used for this.
Thanks to the chip, the guest has access to rooms according to the user role assigned by the staff. User role settings are edited by the administrator. When the guest leaves, the room is deactivated and goes into maintenance mode. Waiting for cleaning service. This confirms the cleaning and the room is again ready for use in the reservation system.
Energy saving is more than certain. It’s hard to quantify precisely because there’s nothing to compare it to. But it is not only about energy, but also about user comfort and operator overview.
In addition to saving energy thanks to smart technologies, you also take it from sustainable sources. From where?
Until this year, in addition to self-gravity solar heating for 800 liters of water, we also had a small 4kW photovoltaic power plant on the roof, which we covered and used batteries to ensure the consumption of the entire building system, a multimedia teaching room, air conditioning, recharging of training radios and a club bar with fridges, freezers, a tap cooling and other appliances.
This year we are connecting another 20 KW of solar energy, the Pipon system will store this energy in an additional 600 liter pre-heater and then also for heating individual boilers in the rooms according to the priorities of the reservation system. The next consumption will also be in our production of paragliding equipment, which we will completely switch to photovoltaic energy. It helps us balance the consumption curve of the produced energy.
I assume that this summer we should reach 75% coverage of the average 30 MWh annual electricity consumption of the campus. That is, an indoor and outdoor bar, school office, complete production of paragliding equipment, two classrooms with training in virtual reality and accommodation in rooms and in the camp.
What else do you have planned?
After the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, we accepted several qualified seamstresses with children, and for a year now we have been dealing with their involvement in our work processes. From the beginning, we expect that the financial support of the Czech state directed to accommodation providers who offered facilities to Ukrainian people affected by the war will one day end and these mothers and children may suddenly have nowhere to live. That is why we immediately started preparing a project of smaller independent cottages for year-round living. The whole process is currently going through the approval procedure, but we believe that it will be completed this year.
How was the project financed?
The costs for approval came to 4.5 million crowns, but of course this does not include the many hours of own work and the work of most of the people who participated in the project and are still participating. We bought the land with a partial installment plan and took a loan from the bank for the construction. Thanks to the interest in our paragliding school and our products, we manage everything financially. The land is already paid off and the bank loan will be soon as well. I was rather more cautious in the input calculations, and that is paying off in today’s somewhat uncertain times.
You also received some subsidies for the project – specifically from the EU for water management.
We did not take a subsidy for the construction of Flight Park Javorový. Partially subsidized we had development activities associated with the design of solutions and the implementation of a chip system and water management, on which we collaborated with BUT Brno. Collaborating with universities is tempting, but it takes a lot of interest from all involved to complete the whole project, and that’s not easy. I am glad that in our case we are able to complete the projects thanks to mutual understanding and above-standard commitment from both sides.
