The Liberec Construction School insulated the first of the Valdštejn Houses

Liberec – The Liberec Secondary School of Civil Engineering has insulated the first of the historical Valdštejn houses that are part of it. The school has offices in it. The work was carried out by students under the guidance of teachers. The school's director Radek Cikl told reporters today.

The ruins of three-story timber-framed houses with steep shingle roofs stand in Větrná Alley near Sokolov Square. They rank among the oldest buildings in Liberec. They bear the name Valdštejn, even though they were built between 1678 and 1681, almost half a century after the duke's death. In appearance, they resemble the original buildings of the new town of Liberec, established by Albrecht von Wallenstein between 1622 and 1634.

Originally, there were a total of 11 houses on both sides of the alley, partially three have survived. They owe this to the secondary school, which has been located in the adjacent Appelt House since 1953. In the 1970s, the Valdštejn houses were already in a state of emergency, and the city even issued a demolition order for them. However, due to the school's efforts, it was possible to preserve at least part of the original timber-framed houses and incorporate them into the extension of the construction school. Since then, the school has partially used them as offices, but conditions for teachers, especially in winter, were unbearable. "When it was minus 21 outside, it was minus eight between the windows and zero here in the middle (of the room). Most of the colleagues who had an office here ran to the staff room," said Karel Vitouš, a teacher at the school who also had an office there, to reporters.

Vitouš is the author of the insulation project for the Valdštejn houses, which was also approved by the conservationists. As an insulating material, Vitouš chose hemp, using an eighty-millimeter layer for insulation. "It has the property that even if moisture were to get into the wood, the hemp would capture it, retain it, and then release it back," Vitouš stated. Additionally, the school’s students applied a so-called traditional clay plaster with a thickness of 2.25 millimeters. "We returned to how it was done before," said Vítězslav Šrůtek, the head of the practical training at the school.

So far, the first of the Valdštejn houses is completed, and according to the school's director, the remaining ones will be insulated gradually. The insulation of one house costs approximately tens of thousands of crowns. In the future, the school would like to use one of the houses as a museum for gathering educational materials, and in another, it aims to create a facility for members or chairs of graduation committees.

The school is gradually working on the restoration of the historical timber-framed houses. A few years ago, emergency work was done at a cost of nearly a million crowns; craftsmen replaced the roofs, statically reinforced the trusses, and anchored them to the neighboring brick house. The timber-framed facades were also repaired.

Tourists can mainly admire the Valdštejn houses from the outside, as the interiors are not usually accessible. In the past, they primarily served to accommodate cloth makers; one used to house an inn called "U města Petrohradu," and Christmas markets were held annually in the arcade.