Thermal issues

2001 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 293-295
Author(s):  
Rob Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Life Cycle Analysis ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Low Energy ◽  
Thermal Mass ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Housing Design ◽  
Building Physics ◽  
Typical Design

Max Fordham's perceptive comments (letters, arq 5/3) raise many interesting points on building physics and the environmental performance of buildings. Our article (arq 5/1) summarizes a research project that environmentally analyzed trends in Danish housing design. The results showed that the typical design strategies advocated by ‘traditional’ low-energy and passive housing design methods (large glass areas and heavy thermal mass) are not necessarily the most optimal. Such strategies only take account of the heating demand and do not use modern life-cycle analysis methodologies where the environmental impact of the building materials is also integrated.

THE ESSENCE OF LOW-ENERGY AFFORDABLE HOUSING DESIGN STRATEGIES

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masa Noguchi
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Construction Materials ◽  
Housing Quality ◽  
Low Energy ◽  
Internal Space ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Zero Energy ◽  
Housing Design ◽  
Zero Carbon ◽  
The Uk

Nearly one-third of the Scottish population is struggling to heat their home properly today. There is an urgent need for the delivery of low-energy affordable homes. However, the homebuilding industry has no systematic way to deliver such unconventional homes, although the UK government has set out a bold “green” target that all newly-built homes be carbon neutral by 2016. Accordingly, this paper explores the status quo of today's affordable homes being built in Scotland; and secondly, it extends the scope to the review of successfully commercialized low- to zero-energy affordable housing developments in Canada. This study emphasizes the significant impact of design choices on the delivery of low- to zero-energy affordable housing, including housing orientations and configurations; construction materials and systems, including renewable energy technologies; and internal planning, with due consideration to the time-related sun positions and the internal space day-lighting and heat gain potentials. In addition, the paper argues that the absence of clear definitions as to housing quality and affordability, and the lack of industry capacity for technical knowledge learning activities, are potential obstacles that limit the spread of sustainable zero-carbon homes in Scotland today. Moreover, the effect of the design charrette approach being practiced in Canada on the homebuilding decision making process was reviewed, with the aim of providing a base for further discussion on the applicability of Canadian low-energy affordable housing design techniques to sustainable zero carbon homes of the future in Scotland.

Life Cycle Analysis of Energy Efficient Measures in a Tropical Housing Design

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Duell ◽  
Lorien A. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Life Cycle Analysis ◽  
Embodied Energy ◽  
Thermal Mass ◽  
Air Conditioner ◽  
Efficient Design ◽  
Housing Design ◽  
Tropical Conditions ◽  
Efficient Measures

Energy conservation has become an issue of global significance, which is a focus reflected in the Australian housing industry’s renewed emphasis on energy-efficient design. The Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) has proposed to increase the stringency of the Building Code of Australia (BCA) to ensure the industry adopts energy efficient measures, including the enhancement of thermal performance and greater recognition of thermal mass in energy rating schemes. However, this proposal’s potential to effect energy savings in tropical housing is yet to be assessed. In order to determine its relative merits under tropical conditions, a standardised house design used in the Tiwi Islands of the Northern Territory (NT) was subjected to life cycle analysis, including analysis of embodied energy, the efficiency of energy saving measures and the resulting active energy consumption. This standardised house, like others in the NT, is designed for retrofitting within 10 years, which reduces the time available for savings in operational energy to exceed energy invested in installing these measures. Housing lifespan would, therefore, significantly impact upon potential benefits resulting from changes to the BCA. In addition, the spatial distances between population settlements in the NT greatly increases embodied energy values. It was found that adopting the proposed measures would result in an increase in energy efficiency through a reduction in the need for refrigerative air conditioner use, and that the embodied energy payback period would fall within the lifespan of the house. Therefore, for this specific tropical design, the BCA’s proposed measures for saving energy were found to be beneficial.

Material Characteristics and Building Physics for Energy Efficiency

2015 ◽  
Vol 666 ◽  
pp. 77-87
Author(s):  
Mohammad Arif Kamal
Keyword(s):  
Building Materials ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Building Envelope ◽  
Thermal Mass ◽  
Heating And Cooling ◽  
Energy Demands ◽  
Material Characteristics ◽  
Prime Concern ◽  
Building Cooling ◽  
Building Physics

Current modern technology in construction can dramatically reduce energy consumed in buildings for mechanical heating and cooling. The application of the latest advancements in various technologies including developments in material science, and using environment friendly building materials is of prime concern. The reductions in building envelope heat losses combined with optimized material configuration and the proper amount of thermal insulation and thermal mass in the building envelope help to reduce the building cooling and heating energy demands and building related CO2 emission into the atmosphere. The selection of appropriate building material helps us to use the energy efficiently. This paper presents a brief study about the building physics and material characteristics that helps in selecting proper building materials.

scholarly journals Architectural ruins: geoculture of the anatomy of buildings as illustrated by Casa Ippolito, Malta

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lino Bianco
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aerial Vehicle ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Building Physics

AbstractRuins are a statement on the building materials used and the construction method employed. Casa Ippolito, now in ruins, is typical of 17th-century Maltese aristocratic country residences. It represents an illustration of secondary or anthropogenic geodiversity. This paper scrutinises these ruins as a primary source in reconstructing the building’s architecture. The methodology involved on-site geographical surveying, including visual inspection and non-invasive tests, a geological survey of the local lithostratigraphy, and examination of notarial deeds and secondary sources to support findings about the building’s history as read from its ruins. An unmanned aerial vehicle was used to digitally record the parlous state of the architectural structure and karsten tubes were used to quantify the surface porosity of the limestone. The results are expressed from four perspectives. The anatomy of Casa Ippolito, as revealed in its ruins, provides a cross-section of its building history and shows two distinct phases in its construction. The tissue of Casa Ippolito—the building elements and materials—speaks of the knowledge of raw materials and their properties among the builders who worked on both phases. The architectural history of Casa Ippolito reveals how it supported its inhabitants’ wellbeing in terms of shelter, water and food. Finally, the ruins in their present state bring to the fore the site’s potential for cultural tourism. This case study aims to show that such ruins are not just geocultural remains of historical built fabric. They are open wounds in the built structure; they underpin the anatomy of the building and support insights into its former dynamics. Ruins offer an essay in material culture and building physics. Architectural ruins of masonry structures are anthropogenic discourse rendered in stone which facilitate not only the reconstruction of spaces but also places for human users; they are a statement on the wellbeing of humanity throughout history.

scholarly journals Development of Building Information Modeling Template for Environmental Impact Assessment

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3092
Author(s):  
Sungwoo Lee ◽  
Sungho Tae ◽  
Hyungjae Jang ◽  
Chang U. Chae ◽  
Youngjin Bok
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Performance Assessment ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Building Information Modeling ◽  
Information Modeling ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Building Information ◽  
Environmental Performance Assessment ◽  
Assessment Results

Eco-friendly building designs that use building information modeling (BIM) have become popular, and a variety of eco-friendly building assessment technologies that take advantage of BIM are being developed. However, existing building environmental performance assessment technologies that use BIM are linked to external assessment tools, and there exist compatibility issues among programs; it requires a considerable amount of time to address these problems, owing to the lack of experts who can operate the programs. This study aims to develop eco-friendly templates for assessing the embodied environmental impact of buildings using BIM authoring tools as part of the development of BIM-based building life cycle assessment (LCA) technologies. Therefore, an embodied environmental impact unit database was developed, for major building materials during production and operating stages, to perform embodied environmental impact assessments. Moreover, a major structural element library that uses the database was developed and a function was created to produce building environmental performance assessment results tables, making it possible to review the eco-friendliness of buildings. A case study analysis was performed to review the feasibility of the environmental performance assessment technologies. The results showed a less than 5% effective error rate in the assessment results that were obtained using the technology developed in this study compared with the assessment results based on the actual calculation and operating stage energy consumption figures, which proves the reliability of the proposed approach.

scholarly journals The Effect of the Thermal Mass of the Building Envelope on Summer Overheating of Dwellings in a Temperate Climate

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 4117
Author(s):  
Tadeusz Kuczyński ◽  
Anna Staszczuk ◽  
Piotr Ziembicki ◽  
Anna Paluszak
Keyword(s):  
Building Materials ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Building Envelope ◽  
Temperate Climate ◽  
Maximum Temperature ◽  
Thermal Mass ◽  
Occupant Behavior ◽  
Average Maximum ◽  
Night Ventilation

The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the effectiveness of increasing the thermal capacity of a residential building by using traditional building materials to reduce the risk of its excessive overheating during intense heat waves in a temperate climate. An additional objective is to show that the use of this single passive measure significantly reduces the risk of overheating in daytime rooms, but also, though to a much lesser extent, in bedrooms. Increasing the thermal mass of the room from light to a medium heavy reduced the average maximum daily temperature by 2.2K during the first heat wave and by 2.6K during the other two heat waves. The use of very heavy construction further reduced the average maximum temperature for the heat waves analyzed by 1.4K, 1.2K and 1.7K, respectively, giving a total possible reduction in maximum daily temperatures in the range of 3.6 °C, 3.8 °C and 4.3 °C. A discussion of the influence of occupant behavior on the use of night ventilation and external blinds was carried out, finding a significant effect on the effectiveness of the use of both methods. The results of the study suggest that in temperate European countries, preserving residential construction methods with heavy envelopes and partitions could significantly reduce the risk of overheating in residential buildings over the next few decades, without the need for night ventilation or external blinds, whose effectiveness is highly dependent on individual occupant behavior.

scholarly journals Three eco-tool comparison with the example of the environmental performance of domestic solar flat plate hot water systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-181
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Life Cycle Analysis ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
Product Lca ◽  
Lca Practitioners ◽  
Standards And Guidelines

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a procedure used as an analytical tool for the evaluation of the environmental impact caused by a material, a manufacturing process or product. For an end product, LCA requires both the identification and quantification of materials and energy used in all stages of the product’s life, together with their environmental impact. It requires therefore a huge amount of data about materials, components, manufacturing processes, energy consumption and the relevant environmental impacts. For this reason, a number of software and databases have been developed, in order to facilitate LCA users. These are the so-called Eco-Tools, used in an effort to minimize the environmental impact of a product from the materials and the energy used for production. In this paper, LCA is conducted for solar thermosyphonic systems, with the aid of three commercially available Eco-Tools, usually used by LCA practitioners, namely: Eco-It, GEMIS and SimaPro, and the results are compared. Although all three tools claim accordance with the international standards and guidelines, differences do exist. A typical solar thermosyphonic system (DSHWS) with a 4 m2 collector area and a capacity of 150 dm3 that covers the hot water needs of a three person family in Thessaloniki is used as case study. The results of the three tools are compared for each component of the solar system as well as for each material used and for the conventional energy substituted by the system.

scholarly journals Design Strategies for Green Practice

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Scott
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Green Building ◽  
Green Buildings ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Environmentally Responsive ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Effective Design

Should green buildings not only work differently, but also look, feel, and be conceived differently? The emergence of LEED accreditation as the leading form of environmental performance monitoring and its associated points and checklist format can mask the necessity for architectural projects to have focused and effective design strategies that integrate sustainability with the design process. Green accountability does not always go hand in hand with architectural quality: a good building is certainly not necessarily a green building, while a green building is not always a good work of architecture. So it becomes important to recognize the unique character and possibilities in each project and then to develop environmentally responsive concepts that support and enhance the form of the architecture. This article discusses the current context for “Green Design Practice” through a series of quite different design assignments where the focus is upon enabling the design to emerge from the recognition of the “environmental and sustainability potential.”

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