Achieving Building Comfort by Natural Means

505 Pages·2022·36.334 MB·English

by  Ali Sayigh

Innovative Renewable Energy
Series Editor: Ali Sayigh
Ali Sayigh   Editor
Achieving
Building Comfort
by Natural
Means
Innovative Renewable Energy
Series Editor
Ali Sayigh
World Renewable Energy Congress
Brighton, UK
The primary objective of this book series is to highlight the best-implemented
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World Renewable Energy Congress and Forum each year.
Ali Sayigh
Editor
Achieving Building Comfort
by Natural Means
Editor
Ali Sayigh
World Renewable Energy Congress
Brighton, UK
ISSN 2522-8927 ISSN 2522-8935 (electronic)
Innovative Renewable Energy
ISBN 978-3-031-04713-8 ISBN 978-3-031-04714-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04714-5
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Introduction
This book sets out to explore the important issue of achieving building comfort
through natural means. First of all, it has to be established why this is considered
such an important issue. It is important because in order to reduce carbon emissions
which lead to climate change it is crucial to minimize the use of energy derived from
fossil fuels.
If we look at the construction and everyday operation of buildings, we find that
buildings consume approximately 45% of total energy. Thus, it is imperative that
this consumption is not only substantially decreased but also that such energy that
is necessary is obtained from environmentally friendly and sustainable sources.
Building comfort can be described from the viewpoint of the inhabitants of the
building. This encompasses such factors as heat levels, ventilation, space, lighting,
acoustic, and levels of activities.
The aim of this book is to investigate the reduction of the use of fossil fuels–
based energy and excessive use of electricity to achieve comfort in buildings. To do
this, many factors have to be considered: global locality, thermal mass, daylighting,
ventilation, solar gain, shading, earth shelter, night radiation, building orientation,
humidity and climate, choice of building material, insulation, noise, energy man-
agement and control, the use of vegetation, the creation of micro-climate, and the
colour of the building.
A first step towards achieving comfort is to look at the American Society of
Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) directive
(55-1992) which sets out two comfort zones as plotted on the psychometric chart
of Fig. 1.
ET lines refer to constant enthalpy lines.
Many investigators have specified that the ideal comfort in domestic and com-
mercial buildings is to maintain a dry bulb temperature of 25 °C and relative humid-
ity of 50%; however, a tolerable level of comfort is acceptable when the dry bulb
temperature is 25–31 °C with the relative humidity range of 20–60%. It is worth
noting that building comfort can be achieved only when the following two factors
are considered, the environmental factor, which involves air temperature, radiant
temperature, air velocity, and humidity, and the personal factor, which consists of
clothing insulation and metabolic heat.
v
vi Introduction
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Operative temperatures (°C)
From 1930 to 2000 several outstanding physicists and architects, such as
Corbusier, Givoni, Szokolay, Olgyay, and Balcomb, have theorized about achieving
comfort levels. However, some architects attributed comfort as being mainly based
on the individual and derived their criteria (for example, from Ole Fanger) from the
percentage of people dissatisfied (PPD) and a function of predicted mean vote
(PMV); see Fig. 2.
The electricity consumption of most households is devoted to space and water
heating, space cooling, cooking, lighting, laundry, electrical appliances, and outside
applications such as gardening and outdoor cleaning. According to Eurostat, in
2018, this represented 26.1% in Europe.
In 2015 some researchers have indicated that typical buildings and their con-
struction account for a massive 36% of energy use and 39% of carbon dioxide (CO )
2
emissions. However, progress towards sustainable buildings and modern construc-
tion methods have failed to keep up with a growing demand for energy. It is of para-
mount importance to improve the energy intensity per metre square of the building
industry by an average of 30% by 2030 compared with the 2015 figure set forth in
the Paris Agreement.
The energy consumption, in kWh/m2, of the construction industry according to
an IEA source (IEA, Energy Technology Perspectives 2017, IEA/OECD, Paris
www.iea.org/etp), in 2000, was 200 kWh/m2 or 200 EJ (exajoule). In 2015 it was
150 EJ. The UN in Paris proposed to reduce this to 100 EJ by 2030, that is, by 30%.
If one judges domestic electricity use in different parts of the world then one
realizes the diversity and uncontrolled reason for it; see Table 1, taken from
Electricity—BP Statistical Review of World Energy (2020).
The disparity in domestic electricity consumption between different parts of the
world is highlighted in the table, which indicates that the wealthiest countries are
profligate in their level of consumption and give scant consideration to the environ-
ment and climate change.
Introduction vii
Fig. 2 The ideal comfort is at zero predicted mean vote (PMV). (Ref: http://ceae.colorado.
edu/~brandem/aren3050/docs/ThermalComfort.pdf)
The UK government (Health and Safety Executive, HSE) issued a check list to
determine comfort in working premises; see Table 2. More than two yes answers
trigger an investigation into the causes of discomfort.
Natural ventilation is an important tool for achieving comfort and reducing both
CO emissions and electricity demand. Ventilation not only improves comfort levels
2
but removes damaging toxins and CO from the air. The inhabitants are not the sole
2
beneficiaries of good natural ventilation; the ‘health’ of the building itself is boosted
by the reduction of humidity and condensation, which are associated with the
growth of mould, which gives rise to health issues and the deterioration of the build-
ing’s fabric. Impurities such as dust, pollen, radon, and variable organic compounds
are also reduced. Effective natural ventilation must be incorporated at the early
stage of building design.
One of the forgotten issues in comfort is noise pollution. Acoustic isolation is an
important issue for comfort. In the UK, there were 313,000 complaints in England
and Wales of domestic noise disturbance in 2004. Buildings have improved acoustic
insulation requirements since 2002. One of the main recommendations regarding
acoustics is to get the building shell right because it is difficult to retrofit an acoustic
material properly afterward.
In this book there are 20 chapters written by authors from various parts of the world
covering multiple buildings and complexes achieving comfort by considering: the vari-
ability of climate temperature; shading; using the retrofitting technique; improving effi-
ciency and temperature control; using natural cooling and ventilation; using ventilative
viii Introduction
Table 1 Electricity consumption per capita in selected countries
Population × Electricity Electricity Consumption per Capita,
Country 103 Generation – TWh kWh
Kuwait 4207 75.0 17,827
UAE 9771 138.1 14,134
USA 329,065 4401.3 13,375
Saudi 34,269 357.4 10,430
Arabia
France 65,130 555.4 8528
Germany 83,517 612.4 7333
China 1,433,794 7503.4 5233
UK 67,530 323.7 4795
Brazil 211,050 625.6 2964
Algeria 43,053 81.3 1888
India 1,366,418 1558.7 1141
Egypt 100388 14.7 146.4
Table 2 Comfort check list questionnaire
Factor Description Yes
Air temperature Does the air feel warm or hot?
Does the temperature in the workplace fluctuate during a
normal working day?
Does the hot or cold season affect the working place
temperature?
Radiant temperature Is there a heat source in the environment?
Is there any equipment that produces steam?
Is the workplace affected by external weather conditions?
Humidity Are your employees wearing (personal protection equipment)
PPE that is vapour impermeable?
Do your employees complain that the air is too dry?
Do your employees complain that the air is humid?
Air movement Is cold or warm air blowing directly into the workspace?
Are employees complaining of draught?
Metabolic rate Is work rate moderate to intensive in warm or hot conditions?
Are employees sedentary in cool or cold environments?
PPE (Personal Protection Is PPE being worn that protects against harmful toxins,
Equipment) chemicals, asbestos, flames, extreme heat, etc.?
Can employees make individual alterations to their clothing in
response to the thermal environment?
Is respiratory protection being worn?
What your employees Do your employees think that there is a thermal comfort
think problem?
Introduction ix
cooling systems; diachronic analysis of daylight design and management technique in
Mediterranean constructions; enhancing the microclimate towards outdoor thermal com-
fort in urban isles in the Mediterranean region; implementing passive solar design using
the building’s geometry and orientation; creating thermal and visual adaptive comfort in
buildings; considering the well-being of the end-users; keeping design in mind of sustain-
ability; neuroscience and architecture; using external shading in humid-to-moderate cli-
mates; building with living bricks to generate energy and wean humanity off fossil fuels;
creating natural cooling in the very hot Arewa sun of Nigeria in traditional Hausa build-
ings; is still ‘ornament’ a ‘crime’; using orientation and courtyards in arid zones of
Arabia; integrating thermal mass in sustainable buildings; creating visual comfort in
UAE heritage buildings such as museums.
The authors come from the Netherlands, Argentina, Egypt, Cuba, the UK,
Canada, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Malaysia, Portugal, Iran, Nigeria, the US, and
Bahrain.
WREN/WREC Ali Sayigh
Brighton, UK