Search results

The purpose of this paper is to identify green envelope building components of residential buildings applicable under hot and humid climates and to analyze the effect of these components on building value.

The authors place an emphasis on green envelope components that influence building value and which are derived based on their integration into a building envelope structure that is applicable under hot and humid climates. This is performed through identification of green benefits of each green envelope component based on literature reviews and in relation to green criteria listed by the Malaysia Green Building Index (GBI). Consequently, a quantitative analysis has been conducted to determine the effect of these green envelope components on building value by means of a questionnaire distribution among 550 property valuation practitioners in Malaysia. However, in order to certify respondents’ credibility, the authors analyzed questionnaires answered by property valuation practitioners with experience in green valuation.

The findings show that there are ten green envelope components currently certified under GBI Malaysia and applicable for hot and humid climates. There are three green envelope components that can increase property values, specifically: solar photovoltaic, green living wall and green roof. However, eight of the green envelope components have no effect on building value.

Due to the relative immaturity of the green building market in Malaysia, the authors were unable to analyze the actual percentage of increment on building value as conveyed by each green envelope component.

This paper aims to provide understanding of the effect of individual green envelope components on building value rather than merely the value of green buildings in general. It proves that green building envelope components do in fact contribute to an increase in green building values. As the green building market in Malaysia is still in its infancy, this study is significant in that it prepares the Malaysian green building market to attain a new level by providing valuation practitioners with awareness of green building values and new knowledge concerning the effect of individual green components on building values. Hence, it is anticipated that this study can assist property valuation practitioners in conducting valuations of green buildings in the future.

An important part of the knowledge required for designing the envelope of a new building is based on experience. Confronted with a building envelope design problem, a human expert adds to well‐established domain knowledge his/her own experience or the experience of others, to support his/her reasoning process, and to guide him/her in stereotypical situations. Based on that observation, we can conclude that the building envelope design fits well the description associated with the so‐called “weak theory domains”, and is a prime candidate for adopting a case‐based reasoning (CBR) approach. Proposes strategies to encode, organize, and compare prototypical building envelope cases within a CBR framework for selecting the construction alternatives during the preliminary stage of the building envelope design. The methodology presented aims to find the most suitable design alternative for a new building envelope from a library of prototypical building cases.

Buildings are responsible for the consumption of around 40% of energy in the world and account for one-third of greenhouses gas emissions. In Saudi Arabia, residential buildings consume half of total energy among other building sectors. This study aims to explore the impact of sixteen envelope variables on the operational and embodied carbon of a typical Saudi house with over 20 years of operation.

A simulation approach has been adopted to examine the effects of envelope variables including external wall type, roof type, glazing type, window to wall ratio (WWR) and shading device. To model the building and define the envelope materials and quantify the annual energy consumption, DesignBuilder software was used. Following modelling, operational carbon was calculated. A “cradle-to-gate” approach was adopted to assess embodied carbon during the production of materials for the envelope variables based on the Inventory of Carbon Energy database.

The results showed that operational carbon represented 90% of total life cycle carbon, whilst embodied carbon accounted for 10%. The sensitivity analysis revealed that 25% WWR contributes to a significant increase in operational carbon by 47.4%. Additionally, the efficient block wall with marble has a major embodiment of carbon greater than the base case by 10.7%.

This study is a contribution to the field of calculating the embodied and operational carbon emissions of a residential unit. Besides, it provides an examination of the impact of each envelope variable on both embodied and operational carbon. This study is limited by the impact of sixteen envelope variables on the embodied as well as operational carbon.

This study is the first attempt on investigating the effects of envelop variables on carbon footprint for residential buildings in Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of this study is to present the importance of integrating common features between the Green Mark Scheme (GMS) and the Buildable Design Appraisal System (BDAS) requirements in building envelopes.

The study presents the common features that influence both the GM score of the building envelope and the buildability score of the wall system. A case study is developed to show the effects of varying the value of a representative common feature in the GM score and the buildability score.

The study finds that lengths of window and wall, and wall materials are the common features that can influence the GM score of the building envelope and the buildability score of the wall system. The case study suggested that the window‐to‐wall ratio (WWR), which is the representative common feature, shows negative relationship with the GM score of the building envelope and positive relationship with the buildability score of the wall system.

The results show that varying the WWR influences the GM score of the building envelope more strongly than the buildability score of the wall system. This seems to imply that building professionals when determining the WWR may have to concern themselves with the GM score of the building envelope more as compared to the buildability score of the wall system.

The study suggests that integrating the common features between GMS and BDAS requirements with other relevant factors such as cost, social and environmental impacts of design can help to save workload, time and budget, as well as facilitate the delivery of more reliable design, planning and management from a practical viewpoint.

The performance of the building envelope of a large-scale public building significantly influences the energy consumption of such a building. This study aims to determine the best strategy for the envelope by examining the engineering design of the building in Nanchang University. The building shape coefficient, sun-shading strategies, window–wall ratio, roof, and walls were studied through a method involving multilayer feed-forward neural network model simulations. Results show that the optimum shape coefficient value is 0.32. The combination of interior and exterior blinds and electrochromic glass is the ideal option to reduce the increase in the energy consumption of the architecture caused by solar radiation. Maintaining the window–wall ratio at 0.4 is ideal. A green roof exerts a minimal effect on building energy consumption decrease (only 0.4%). Applying the strategy of vertical greening to the external wall can reduce cooling energy consumption by as much as 5.4%. Adopting the best envelope strategy combination can further decrease energy consumption by 20.8%. This strategy is also applicable to the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River in China, which flow through Nanchang and have a climate similar to that of the said area. Future research should be directed toward applying artificial neural networks to quantitatively evaluate the effects of a design strategy and produce the best design strategy combination.

This paper aims to demonstrate the optimization of an existing residential building in a tropical climate using indigenous materials as an alternative to conventional building envelopes to achieve thermal comfort and affordable housing.

This study mainly adopted a quantitative research methodology through a comprehensive simulation study on a selected prototype building. The energy plus simulation tool in DesignBuilder was used to predict the average monthly and annual thermal comfort of a typical residential building in the study area. Also, a cost analysis of the final optimization interventions was conducted to estimate the construction cost savings.

The comparative analysis of simulation results for the base-case and optimized models indicates potential advantages in replacing conventional building envelope materials with indigenous materials. The base-case simulation results showed that the annual operative temperature is more than the adaptive thermal comfort set points in tropical climates, by 8.26%. This often leads to interventions using mechanical cooling systems, thus triggering overconsumption of energy and increase in CO₂ emissions. The building envelope materials for floor, walls and roof were replaced with low U-values indigenous materials until considerable results in terms of thermal comfort and overall building construction cost were achieved. The final simulation results showed that using indigenous materials for the ground floor, external walls and roof could substantially reduce the annual operative temperature by 8%, thereby increasing the predicted three months of thermal comfort in the base-case to nine months annually. Likewise, there was a 32.31%, 35.78% and 41.81% reduction in the annual CO₂ emissions, cooling loads and construction costs, respectively.

The knowledge of indigenous materials as an alternative to conventional materials for sustainable buildings is not new. However, most of the available research is focused on achieving affordable housing. There is a dearth of research showing the extent that these indigenous materials can be used to improve indoor thermal comfort in developing countries with tropical climates such as Nigeria.

This study has assessed the thermal performance of locally fabricated bio-based building envelopes made of coconut and corn husk composite bricks to reduce building wall heat transmission load and energy consumption towards green building adaptation.

Samples of coconut fiber (coir) and corn husk fiber bricks were fabricated and tested for their thermophysical properties using the Transient Plane Source (TPS) 2500s instrument. A simulation was conducted using Dynamic Energy Response of Building - Lunds Tekniska Hogskola (DEROB-LTH) to determine indoor temperature variation over 24 h. The time lag and decrement factor, two important parameters in evaluating building envelopes, were also determined.

The time lag of the bio-based composite building envelope was found to be in the range of 4.2–4.6 h for 100 mm thickness block and 10.64–11.5 h for 200 mm thickness block. The decrement factor was also determined to be in the range of 0.87–0.88. The bio-based composite building envelopes were able to maintain the indoor temperature of the model from 25.4 to 27.4 °C, providing a closely stable indoor thermal comfort despite varying outdoor temperatures. The temperature variation in 24 h, was very stable for about 8 h before a degree increment, providing a comfortable indoor temperature for occupants and the need not to rely on air conditions and other mechanical forms of cooling. Potential energy savings also peaked at 529.14 kWh per year.

The findings of this study present opportunities to building developers and engineers in terms of selecting vernacular materials for building envelopes towards green building adaptation, energy savings, reduced construction costs and job creation.

This study presents for the first time, time lag and decrement factor for bio-based composite building envelopes for green building adaptation in hot climates, as found in Ghana.

As green building movement is widespread throughout the world, low-energy building becomes the standard. A designer's selection of building systems and materials during early design phase becomes more important. It is essential that designers include embodied energy and emissions among other criteria they use in selecting materials during the design development phase of a building. The aim of this study is to develop a model to integrate the embodied energy, embodied emissions, and cost of the alternative structure and envelope systems of a building during the design development stage.

A conceptual model is proposed to integrate the embodied energy, embodied emissions, and cost of the alternative structure and envelope systems of a building. A case study is used to test the proposed model in predicting the embodied impacts and cost of structure and envelope systems for an educational building.

The proposed model can assist designers in making informed decisions at the early design stage and selecting alternative structure and envelope systems considering embodied impacts and costs.

Designers consider reducing embodied impacts of buildings during early design phase as an important social responsibility, especially for megaprojects, which have great impact on our daily life.

Development of a model that can be used to support design decisions regarding sustainable design (embodied energy and embodied carbon emissions) and costs of buildings in early design phase.

There are a number of decision-making problems encountered by a building design team. This issue is apparent in assessment of building envelope materials and designs in the early design stage. The purpose of this paper is to develope a decision support tool based on a quality function deployment (QFD) approach integrated with a knowledge management system (KMS) and fuzzy theory to facilitate a building design team to simultaneously mitigate the decision-making problems when assessing the building envelope materials and designs for the first instance.

This study engaged a design team comprising three decision makers (DMs) to test the developed decision support tool through a case study of a representative building project. The study employed deductive qualitative data analysis with use of a framework analysis approach to analyze perspectives of the DMs after completing the case study through a semi-structured interview.

A mapping diagram derived qualitatively from the framework analysis suggested that the tool can help mitigate the identified decision-making problems as a whole.

Practical contributions of using the decision support tool include achievement of a more efficient design and construction management, and higher productivity of a project. In terms of academic contributions, this study expands capabilities of a conventional decision support system, KMS, and QFD tool to handle decision-making problems.

The purpose of this paper is based on recent research at Oxford Brookes University which explored how metal building envelopes can provide high levels of air‐tightness.

An intensive research programme tested many of the foremost cladding systems used in the UK. Over 500 individual tests have produced reliable data on the performance of different joint types. This paper summarises that data and identifies key design issues and solutions.

The research has demonstrated that metal building envelopes can provide very high levels of air‐tightness providing that they are properly engineered and assembled. It also presents compelling evidence, based on whole building thermal dynamic simulations using the test data, that further increases in air‐tightness are achievable; far more energy can be saved by doing this than by increasing thermal insulation even further.

The testing programme concentrated on steel cladding systems, both built‐up and composite panels, with technical assessment of different joints assemblies using a dedicated purpose‐built air‐tightness test rig.

As this research and other studies have shown that far more energy can be saved by achieving high levels of air‐tightness than by increasing thermal insulation even further, it suggests that a major change in regulatory strategy is now due.

The value of the paper lies in the originality of the testing programme and method. Although BSRIA has been testing whole completed buildings for air‐tightness using large mobile fan units pressurising the building to 50 Pa, it is the first time that a variety of cladding systems have been tested for air‐tightness on a large scale and in a laboratory environment; BRE carried out air‐tightness testing on few steel cladding systems on a smaller scale.