Experiences with ventilative cooling in practical application from completed active houses
Experiences with ventilative cooling in practical application from completed active houses
The report looks closely at the ventilation and thermal environment of Active Houses, covering the benefits and what still needs to be improved. The paper reports that Active Houses have better airtightness than what is nationally required, that the indoor air quality is of a high standard regardless of the type of ventilation system installed, that thermal comfort can be achieved with generous daylight conditions and that natural ventilation and dynamic solar shading must be applied to avoid overheating. However, work still needs to be done - the current methods in standards and legislation that are used to determine the performance of ventilative cooling need to be improved and affordable, intuitive and simple control systems for residential hybrid ventilation and dynamic solar shading are needed.
Benchmark and requirement to comfort levels by use of active house tools
Benchmark and requirement to comfort levels by use of active house tools
Although energy efficiency is certainly important when building a sustainable building, this report argues that we need a more holistic approach early on in the design process. As people spend 80-90% of their time indoors, there also needs to be a strong focus on the indoor environment and consequently the health of the occupants. The VELUX Group's Active House vision adopts this holistic approach and the paper presents a number of projects, detailing the design process and how daylight levels and indoor climates can be optimised.
Control of indoor climate systems in active houses
Control of indoor climate systems in active houses
This paper is a first hand account from the project managers of VELUX Group's six model Active Houses, a collection of houses in five European countries which are energy efficient, eco-friendly and have good indoor environments. The paper details how best to run an Active House, covering how to design the home, how to run the heating and cooling systems, how to manage hybrid ventilation systems, how to ensure a steady flow of sunlight but protect against overheating, and how to manage the technical control systems.
A proposal for a European standard for daylight in buildings
A proposal for a European standard for daylight in buildings
This paper describes a proposal for a daylight standard for CEN countries. It is now widely accepted in the research community, and increasingly so amongst practitioners, that the standards/guidelines for daylight in buildings are in need of upgrading. The essence of the proposal is that the `target' for daylight provision should be founded on the availability of daylight as determined from climate. The method, founded on cumulative di use illuminance curves, could be introduced relatively swiftly since it requires only modest enhancement of existing daylight prediction tools.
A roadmap for upgrading national/EU standards for daylight in buildings
A roadmap for upgrading national/EU standards for daylight in buildings
Attempts to advance standards for measuring daylight in buildings beyond the daylight factor (DF) have, so far, met with limited success. One reason is that it often appears to be impossible to advance the DF methodology by incremental means. It is now widely acknowledged that climate-based daylighting modelling (CBDM) offers the means to make a major advancement in the evaluation of daylight in buildings. Whilst metrics founded on CBDM will almost certainly form the basis for daylight standards in the medium term, there is a pressing need to progress current practice in the short term. Here, the authors propose that a long-overlooked method linking the estimation of daylight provision to prevailing climate be used as the basis for guidelines and standards.
Daylighting metrics for residential buildings
Daylighting metrics for residential buildings
This study uses a domestic dwelling as the setting to investigate and explore the applicability of daylighting metrics for residential buildings. In addition to provision of daylighting and the potential for reducing electric lighting usage, we also investigate the formulation of metrics for non-visual elements such as regulation of the circadian system.
Daylighting metrics: is there a relation between useful daylight illuminance and daylight glare probability?
Daylighting metrics: is there a relation between useful daylight illuminance and daylight glare probability?
It is generally agreed that any metric(s) to replace the daylight factor should be founded on climate-based daylight modelling (CBDM). In this paper we examine the relationship between the predicted annual occurrence of glare and one of the candidate CBDM metrics that has been proposed, called useful daylight illuminance (UDI). The setting is a residential building which we use as a ‘virtual laboratory’ in two design configurations, each evaluated under all 32 combinations of 8 European climates and 4 building orientations.
Daylight visualizer and EIC visualizer, simulation tools for residential buildings
Daylight visualizer and EIC visualizer, simulation tools for residential buildings
The use of complex building simulation tools is less common in the design of residential buildings than it is for commercial buildings. Tools that allow quick evaluations of residential buildings with regards to indoor environmental quality exist, but these rarely use the dynamic simulations necessary for evaluating the performance of natural ventilation and solar shading, and rarely offer the possibility to visualize the appearance of daylight in the room. The Daylight Visualizer and Energy and Indoor Climate Visualizer are free simulation tools with a simple and intuitive user interface permitting quick evaluation of residential buildings.