George Baird

Energy performance of buildings

This book is a guide to the conservation and control of energy use in buildings for national energy planners and researchers, architects, engineers, building owners, and managers. Historical information on energy use in buildings and a new framework for classifying the roles and concerns of all groups involved in building energy performance are presented. It also permits access to detailed information for those with particular interests: strategies and techniques of energy management, successful conservation programs, energy prediction methods and factors affecting energy consumption, and the underlying principles of building energy performance standards. Results of field surveys on large numbers of commercial and institutional buildings, indexes of building energy performance and relevant data, and Sl and l-P units supplement this guide. CONTENTS: Energy and Building -- Evolving Concerns. Building Energy Performance -- A New Framework. National Concerns -Institutional Roles and Energy Standards. Owner Concerns. Designer Concerns -- Capital Energy Requirements. Designer Concerns -- Systems Energy Consumption. User Concerns -- Energy Management and Analysis. Building Energy Performance -- Future Concerns. Index.

Use of a hybrid energy analysis method for evaluating the embodied energy of building materials

The three main methods of energy analysis are outlined and a brief description given of a hybrid analysis method that makes optimum use of all three. The procedures involved in carrying out a hybrid analysis using the case of steel produced from recycled scrap are described and the embodied energy coefficients of a range of building materials are tabulated.

A comparison of the performance of sustainable buildings with conventional buildings from the point of view of the users

The authors’ aim was to determine whether users perceived sustainable buildings to be performing differently from conventional buildings. To do so, they surveyed and analysed users’ perceptions of 45 factors related to operational, environmental, personal control and satisfaction aspects of two sets of buildings: a worldwide set of 31, selected on the basis of their sustainability credentials, and a set of 109 conventional selected from a larger database of commercial and institutional buildings. The user perception scores for each factor were summarized and compared for the two sets of buildings. It was found that the sustainable buildings performed very much better than the conventional buildings in terms of operational and satisfaction factors. In terms of environmental factors, modest improvements were found in thermal conditions and lighting, but little difference in noise, whereas personal control was largely unchanged. Some common features of the sustainable buildings are identified.

Post-occupancy evaluation and experimental feedback of a net zero-energy building in a tropical climate

Located in the French tropical Island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean, the ENERPOS building was inaugurated in January 2009. The building is located in the Saint Pierre Campus of the University of Reunion Island. It was designed to be a net zero-energy building with mixed-mode air-conditioning systems in some areas (natural ventilation, ceiling fans, air conditioning) and efficient passive solutions sets usually used in tropical areas – i.e. efficient solar protection coupled with cross natural ventilation. This article reports the results of a recent user survey of the staff and students who use the building, and relates the users’ perceptions to some of the environmental control systems installed. Indications are that the users have been able to achieve thermally comfortable conditions for much of the year without recourse to the air-conditioning systems. However, there is still the need for more readily available information on how to get the best from the windows and the ceiling fan systems for the ever-changing groups of students, and staff who may only use the classrooms intermittently. For the more permanent staff group, preliminary indications are of improved health and productivity by comparison with their experience of other buildings.

Lighting conditions in sustainable buildings: results of a survey of users’ perceptions

For the last 4 years, the authors have been investigating the performance in practice of a range of sustainable commercial and institutional buildings worldwide. These investigations involved the principal author in one or more visits to each of the buildings and the personal distribution and collection of a questionnaire survey seeking users’ perceptions (on a 7-point scale) of a range of factors: operational, environmental, personal control and satisfaction. For this article, the authors focus on users’ perceptions of the quality of lighting in their work areas. The users’ overall perceptions of lighting conditions are presented and analysed, first with an overview of the average scores for each question, followed by a look at the shapes of their distributions over the set of buildings and then the results of some correlations between lighting overall and a number of other key performance factors such as health, productivity and overall comfort. It was found that lighting overall was one of the higher scoring factors of the environmental category, and the average scores for the amount of natural and artificial lighting were close to the ideal. However, direct glare from the lights and from the sun and sky were noted as issues to be addressed.

Designers’ intentions versus users’ perceptions: a comparison of two refurbished office buildings

Following on from his investigation of the performance in practice of over 30 new commercial and institutional buildings worldwide from the point of view of users, the author and his associates conducted a detailed investigation of two major office refurbishments in Wellington, New Zealand. The main aims were to see how the refurbished buildings were perceived by the occupants, how these perceptions compared with the worldwide set of mainly new buildings, and what design processes were employed. The investigation involved interviewing members of the design teams and conducting a questionnaire survey of the users of each building. It was found that both buildings scored very well for their design and overall comfort, but there were significant differences in the users’ perceptions of health and productivity. One building was found to perform considerably better than the worldwide sample average, and the other on a par with or slightly under the average. These case studies give a clear indication that refurbishments and even fit-outs within the constraints of an existing shell are quite capable of equalling and even surpassing the performance of completely new designs from the point of view of building users, and that a design approach more inclusive of the prospective occupants can result in significantly better users’ perceptions of a building.

Energy — audit and management: Practical application of methodology in USE of energy audits in New Zealand schools

The authors, Nigel Isaacs, Michael Donn and Dr George Baird of the School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, present a succinct account of the practical difficulties they encountered when implementing recommendations from energy audits in a defined number of New Zealand schools. It is concluded that these difficulties relate more to funding and personnel than the engineering of the energy savings in themselves.

Special edition: recent advancements in architectural science for the twenty firstst century

Architectural Science for the twenty first century is no longer simply about the science of buildings. Designing structures and spaces that minimize adverse environmental and social impacts is not just an architectural problem. It is more than that. Before we design structures and spaces, we need to understand the context, the site, the climate, the environment surrounding the habitable spaces. Improving indoor environment quality, for example, can only be successfully and effectively achieved, if we first improve the outdoor environment. Architectural Science for the twenty first century is also about the science of smart approaches, smart thinking and techniques, supported by smart technologies including digital technologies. This Special Edition of Architectural Science Review presents a rangeof articles addressing ‘RecentAdvancements inArchitectural Science for the twenty first century’. The selected articles have been extensively developed from the necessarily shorter and narrower scope of papers initially presented at the 50th Architectural Science Association Conference, held in Adelaide, South Australia, from 7 to 9 December 2016. They represent a very brief sampling from the breadth of topics that architectural science and architectural scientists must consider now and in the future. Our sample of seven articles ranges over several different aspects of urban climatology, through different techniques for calculating the daylighting of buildings and spaces, to the development of innovative methods of construction. Don’t let anyone tell you that Architectural Science is a narrow topic! The first article by Ehsan Sharifi and John Boland is entitled ‘Limits of thermal adaptation in cities: outdoor heat-activity dynamics in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide’. It reports on a study in threeAustralian cities: Sydney,Melbourne andAdelaide, to investigate the outdoor neutral temperature threshold for people in these three cities which would allow them to conduct outdoor activitieswithout any concerns over thermal discomfort caused by outdoor heat stress. Data collected on the type of outdoor activities, people’s clothing and activities, as well as on the microclimatemeasurementsweremapped together. The results show that outdoor neutral thermal threshold was between 22 and 34°C. Such a finding is important to enable the design of the urban envelopes thatwould result in the above outdoor thermal threshold. The two articles that follow also deal with urban level issues focusing on ventilation of outdoor areas. Wei You, Jialei Shen and Wowo Ding are concerned with ‘Improving residential building arrangement design by assessing outdoor ventilation efficiency in different regional spaces’. They used computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations to explore the correlation between different residential building arrangements and the ventilation of the surrounding outdoor spaces. Their findings reinforce the importance of wind direction and building orientation for improving the ventilation efficiency around residential neighbourhoods. The interactions between indoor and outdoor spaces are also addressed in the following article by Weiwen Wang and Edward Ng. In ‘Large-eddy simulations of air ventilation in parametric scenarios: Comparative studies of urban form and wind direction’ the authors employ a large-eddy simulation (LES) model to evaluate the effects of building form and wind direction on urban ventilation. The authors put forward a number of important conclusions and recommendations for urban planners. Reducing environmental impacts and reliance on fossil fuels is one of themain challenges of the twenty first century. Among a number of strategies, installing solar photovoltaic panels allows buildings to be self-sufficient in electricity, thus reducing the environmental impacts. In the previous century, the most common strategy was by placing photovoltaic panels on the roof to generate electricity to be used in the building. Advanced technologies of the twenty first century have allowed new technologies for building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) so that the solar panels are placed on the façade instead of on the roof of a building. The challenge is to find out whether adding solar panels as the building façade would reduce the amount of daylight in the building. The fourth article by Yi He and Marc Aurel Schnabel proposes a methodology to calculate daylight in a space of a building with BIPV facades. Calculating the amount of daylight in a space is usually done by performing daylight simulation over a full year. Such simulation can be a long process, depending on the complexity of the buildinggeometry and surfaces aswell as external conditions. To reduce simulation time, James Sullivan and Michael Donn have proposed ‘Some simple methods for reducing daylight simulation time’. Random sampling of a small number of hours per month rather than a full annual simulation is suggested as adequate for preliminary design purposes, and it is claimed that lower resolution grids can be used with confidence. The advancements of architectural science to face the challenges of the twenty first century are also about advancing knowledge about the production of buildings and the innovative techniques to construct them. The final two articles in this Special Edition address precisely that. The first article is by Robert Doe and is concerned with ‘Facilitating integration of computational design processes in the design and production of prefabricated homes’. The title says it all and the article details how the author set about identifyingpotential solutions The second paper is by Gregory Nolan and entitled ‘Managing risk while

Key Characteristics of Top Performing Sustainable Buildings from the Perspective of the Users

With an overall mission of obtaining an independent unbiased evaluation of their performance, the author has surveyed and analyzed the users’ perceptions of a world-wide set of thirty-one sustainable commercial and institutional buildings located in a range of climatic zones. The ‘top ten’ buildings, in terms of an overall ‘Summary Index’, were identified. In this chapter, these buildings are examined in more depth, and their key features identified. These include having a client and designers committed to sustainability and energy efficiency, the employment of integrated design processes, the judicious application of fundamental sustainability principles in terms of the design of the building envelope and the selection of the environmental control systems, and a commitment to the ongoing operation of the building.

Responding to architectural expression and performance

What a great pleasure it was to see a review by someone who has obviously read The Architectural Expression of Environmental Control Systems (Baird, 2001a) in some detail, understood its intent and is prepared to offer clear comments on its content and its message from their particular perspective. I appreciate Raymond J. Cole’s perceptive comments and am pleased to see the number of important issues he developed as a result. I hope to be able to respond; not in any defensive or refutational mode, but more with a view to progressing their investigation and resolution.