energy efficient building envelope design

Due care should be taken to avoid glare and heat reflection onto the neighbouring buildings. Cool roofs can save roughly up to seven percent of air-conditioning loads at the top floor. This further helps reduce the sizing requirement for air-conditioning equipment. This coincides with peak energy demand requirements, and therefore help to reduce peak loads. Cool roofs reflect heat, and are most effective during the hottest part of the day, the hottest time of year.

Decrease envelope heat gain: One of the simplest way to reduce heat gain is to provide for cool roofs and cool paints.

This is an important aspect and gives a clear guideline on the impact of the envelope on the entire building energy consumption over its lifecycle.

Using simulation techniques to optimise orientation, envelope and building mass: Effects of shading elements (external and selfshading) in order to maximise views and minimise heat gain can be accomplished using simulation techniques.

A few of the approaches are outlined below: The design process is fairly simple, though it needs a lot of detailing around including best design practices in the overall design. Provide adequate wall and roof insulation to minimise external heat gain. Using simulation techniques to optimise orientation, envelope and building mass & Fig.2.

Research and case studies indicate that the envelope ECMs (wall, window, roof, shading) provide higher savings for buildings over the entire lifecycle, with little or marginal impact on first cost. These ECMs have to be planned during the design stage to achieve large, but relatively low cost gains. It is therefore imperative to aggressively manage building energy efficiency and include a slew of (ECMs) as important metrics in the integrated whole-building design. The remaining 10 to 20 per cent is consumed during the construction, material manufacturing, and demolition phases (United Nations Environment Programme, 2010). These resource-intensive materials, their processes and operations require a high level of fossil fuel use.Īccording to UNEP, approximately 80 to 90 per cent of the energy a building uses during its entire life cycle is consumed for heating, cooling, lighting, and other appliances. However, contemporary office buildings are energy-intensive and increasingly make use of steel, aluminium and glass as primary materials for construction.

Buildings in India were traditionally built with a high thermal mass (brick, stone masonry) and used natural ventilation as their principal ventilation and cooling strategy.

Energy efficient building envelope design