StartupRealities

Startup No 171 - StartupRealities 2020 series BarnPartitions  is a construction company that converts rural barns into residential homes by lining the walls with insulation and installing a movable suspended ceiling for heat insulation in the winter. The suspended ceiling is inspired by the retractable lining on heated swimming pools, which conserves the heat of the water during the night. CEO QUOTE " Barns are great places to live in during the summer: spacious and cool. It is the winter that makes living in them a bit of an ordeal. This is where our insulation technology makes the big difference. In the summer you can enjoy the spacious interior of a tall barn, all the way up to the roof. In the winter this space becomes a liability when you have to heat it up, so we install retractable suspended ceilings that keep your heating bill to a minimum. " - said BarnPartitions founder and CEO Barney Pebble . Barn in New England (image source: Wikipedia ) Barn interior...

StartupRealities No 115 ChurchPooling  is a real estate developer which converts disused churches into community swimming pools. The pools designed and built by the company have a characteristic Gothic atmosphere as the structure and interior of the church is preserved in the transformation process and the roof or dome is visible from the water. The foundations of a church usually need to be dug out and strengthened to accommodate a pool at ground/basement level. Fancier projects are sometimes implemented where the water level of the pool is up to 2 metres above ground level, which requires strengthening and waterproofing the walls of the church to support the weight of the water column. CEO QUOTE "We often get asked if we discover interesting objects when we dig inside churches, 'Tales from the Crypt'-style. Occasionally we do find bones in the oldest churches as the church floor was traditionally used for burying nobility and clergy in the Middle Ages. However, most...