Energy saving and “The Composite Ten”

For its international symposium on energy conservation in April, CIB working commission W67 invited “country monographs” on the energy situation in a number of countries. Ten such reports were analysed by the author, who shows that realistic action on buildings in these countries, which he calls “The Composite Ten”, could save 10-15 per cent of their present total primary energy consumption by the year 2000 — or as much energy as is currently consumed each year in France or the UK.     

Test houses measure energy conservation

Crucial to the energy equation in the UK are its buildings, which consume 40-50 per cent of total primary energy supplies. Here, a member of CIB commission W67 on energy conservation and co-ordinator of the technical sub-group on heat pumps, reviews energy studies at BRE and describes the three low-energy houses being used to test the possibilities of solar energy, heat reclaim and a heat pump.     

Energy saving in existing housing

In one of several pilot projects financed through the Swedish Council of Building Research, the Department of Building Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, showed how energy consumption could be reduced by more than 50 per cent in a typical three-storey block of flats built around 1940. Thermal insulation levels of the building were low by Swedish standards — walls and roofs having U-values of 1.2 W/m². °C — and oil consumption was as high as 60 litres per m² of net dwelling area.     

Progress report from Sweden

A huge investment in energy conservation is a feature of Swedish political life. The generous system of grants and loans to householders, the tightening of building regulations and the innovatory development projects, notably with solar energy, are reviewed in this article. It continues our series of progress reports from countries represented on CIB working commission W67 — energy conservation.     

How people use their sunspaces

At ‘Les Balcons de Velchée’, a group of flats in Eastern France, the south‐west façades have fully glazed enclosures to exploit solar gain. This paper from the Sophia‐Antipolis division of the CSTB reports a detailed investigation which showed that occupants do not follow the ‘standard’ behaviour assumed in heating need calculations. The effect on actual thermal performance is significant, though the energy‐saving advantages of sunspaces are still considerable.

The article is based on a paper given at the 1986 Lisbon symposium of CIB working commission W67.     

Economics and the selection and development of energy standards for buildings

Energy-conservation standards for new buildings will play a major rôle in federal and state conservation policies in the coming decade. This article discusses economic-efficiency considerations that can be incorporated into the selection and development of such standards. Three types of energy budgets — ‘fixed energy budgets’, ‘partially variable energy budgets’, and ‘economically efficient energy budgets’ (EEEB) — are examined for use as standards. Economic-efficiency criteria are presented for use in selecting an appropriate energy budget. An illustrative example shows the potential dollar losses in life-cycle terms from failing to apply an EEEB. Research and operational requirements for developing and implementing an energy budget are described. Three energy-budget standards are evaluated in terms of economic efficiency, administrative feasibility, equity, and consistency in design requirements. An EEEB appears optimal in that it ranks highest overall with respect to the four criteria. Failure to begin research for, and development of, EEEBs now would impose unnecessary social costs in the form of extra expenses to achieve any chosen target levels of energy conservation in buildings.     

Place and Special Places: Innovations in Conservation Practice in Northern Ireland

The ‘sense of place’ that relates human beings to their environment is under threat from the rising tide of ‘placelessness’ which can result from potentially positive forces such as urban regeneration as well as negative ones such as incremental degradation. The concept of ‘sense of place’, and the need to protect and enhance ‘special places’, has underpinned UK conservation legislation and policy in the post-war era. In Northern Ireland, due to its distinctive settlement tradition, its troubled political circumstances and its centralised administrative system, a unique hierarchy of ‘special places’ has evolved, involving ‘areas of townscape and village character’ as well as conventional ‘conservation areas’. For the first time a comprehensive comparative survey of the townscape quality of most of these areas has been carried out in order to test the hypothesis that too many conservation area designations may ‘devalue the conservation coinage’. It also assesses the contribution that ‘areas of townscape character’ can make in this situation, as potential conservation areas or as second-level local amenity designations. Its findings support the initial hypothesis: assessment of townscape quality on the basis of consistent criteria demonstrates a decline in the quality of more recent conservation area designations, and hence some ‘devaluation of the coinage’. However, the need for local discretion in the protection of local amenity supports the concept of ‘areas of townscape and village character’ as an additional and distinct designation. This contradicts recent policy recommendations from the Northern Ireland Planning Commission and contains valuable lessons for conservation policy and practice in other parts of the UK.     

Carbon print studies for the energy conservation regulations of the UK and China

The recently published building energy conservation regulation of China (GB50189-2005, 2005 [1]) was compared with the latest UK building energy conservation regulation (Part L) (Building Regulation Approved Document L2A, 2006 [2]). The UK regulation appeared stricter in its requirements and standards than the Chinese regulation. In two case studies, the design of a sample building is altered to fulfil the minimum requirements of the two regulations. The energy consumption and Carbon print of the virtual building under the two set of regulations are estimated by computer based models in the two case studies based on a building in the Cold regions. The building under the UK regulation showed higher energy efficiency and less Carbon emissions per year. The high level estimate in the case studies discovered a potential energy savings of 29% by strengthening the design requirements in the Chinese regulation to the UK level. The improvement on energy efficiency of buildings can be achieved in strengthening the proactive design aspects on building envelope, efficient HVAC, lighting and lighting control system. The software used was SBEM which is the default tool in the UK Part L regulation.     

Development of the SfB system

A revised presentation of the SfB system has just been published by CIB's SfB Development Group as CIB Report No. 22. In this article Ingvar Karlén, director of the SfB Bureau and co-ordinator of CIB Working Commission W58 – SfB Development Group, discusses the development of the system as an international ‘common language’ for the co-ordination, storage and retrieval of information relating to building operations, nationally and internationally. The new CIB report includes revised Basic Tables which form the ‘core’ of the system, and these tables are supplied as an enclosure with the present issue of ‘Building Research and Practice’.     

Re-Imagining Psychiatric Asylum Spaces through Residential Redevelopment: Strategic Forgetting and Selective Remembrance

The closure of psychiatric asylums across the western world has brought significant amounts of ‘brown field’ land onto the market over the past few decades. Situated on the edge (or former edge) of many cities, these sites have proven attractive for residential redevelopment. Drawing on two case studies from the UK and New Zealand, we consider the implications of such recycling in the built environment for the memory of the former use, asking how redevelopment addresses the stigmatised past of the asylum. We discuss issues associated with the ‘re-imagining’ of heritage buildings and landscapes and examine the extent to which the past is strategically forgotten or selectively remembered in the repackaging of the asylum as housing. We conclude that while stigma continues to cast a shadow over reuse of former asylum spaces, in both case studies impacts seem to dissipate over time. In the UK, this dissipation appears to be enhanced by the presence of policies that cast redevelopment for housing as a source of funding for heritage conservation.     

Progress report from the USA

Continuing our series, this article shows how the rate of growth of energy consumption has slowed considerably in the United States after 1973, and has then remained constant on a per capita basis. Consumption by all buildings had reached nearly 37 per cent of the total by 1978, however, spurred by the big increase in the number of houses, which explains why R & D on energy use in housing is so important in the US context.     

Awareness development for an energy management program for social housing in Canada

Social housing organizations compete with other social causes for limited public and private sector funding. While the environmental impact is important, it must be recognized that for most social housing organizations the most appealing aspect of an energy management program is the reduction in operating costs through reduced energy consumption. In order to secure financial resources for an energy management program, organizations will need to identify and address stakeholder perspectives in the formulation of ‘marketing’ strategies. The ‘marketing’ of an energy management program would be aimed at illustrating the substantial financial savings that can be achieved by increasing energy efficiency in social housing units. The bonus of an energy management program is the contribution towards environmental conservation and initiatives such as the Kyoto Protocol, as increased efficiency in energy usage and the subsequent reduction in overall energy consumption in social housing units contributes to reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.     

节能趋势下建筑施工改良技术研究

建筑施工过程中开展降低能源消耗以及改良能源大规模消耗施工工艺方面的研究对于节能环保具有重要意义。以此为出发点,本文分析了节能趋势下改良建筑施工技术的重要意义,并在此基础上,着重探讨了节能趋势下建筑施工技术的改良途径。     

Building with soil-cement bricks

An experimental building constructed of bricks made from a silty sand with 5 per cent cement is still in use as a store at the UK Building Research Establishment. Faults have developed over the years, but the following report suggests that this type of brick could find many uses in reasonably sheltered surroundings provided care is taken to ensure the exclusion of excessive quantities of water.     

First evidence for the reliability of building co-heating tests

This paper provides powerful evidence empirically demonstrating for the first time the reliability of the co-heating test. The test is widely used throughout Europe to measure the total heat transfer through the fabric of buildings and to calculate the heat-transfer coefficient (HTC; units W/K). A reliable test is essential to address the ‘performance gap’, where in-use energy performance is consistently, and often substantially, poorer than predicted. The co-heating test could meet this need, but its reliability requires confirmation. Seven teams independently conducted co-heating tests on the same detached house near Watford, UK. Despite differences in the weather and in the experimental and analytical approaches, the teams’ final reported HTC measurements were within ±10% of the mean. With further standardization it is likely to be possible to improve upon this reproducibility. Furthermore, uncertainty analysis based upon a 95% confidence interval resulted in an estimated uncertainty in HTC measurements of ±8%. This research addresses persistent doubts about the reliability of the co-heating test. Avenues to further improvement of the test are discussed. This work helps to enable the test’s wider adoption as a component of the regulatory process and thus improvements to standards of house construction.     

Classification by CI/SfB

Early in 1975 the RIBA will publish its Construction Indexing Manual, presenting fuller details of the CI/SfB system. This follows the revised presentation of CIB's SfB system in a CIB report last year. The developments are explained in this article by the director of the SfB Agency UK, with reference to a simple classification of articles in ‘Building Research and Practice.’     

Energy Saving and Boiler Load Factora

The efficiencies of boilers typically fall with decreasing load. It has been suggested that, when dwellings have extra thermal insulation, the efficiencies of domestic gas boilers fall so sharply with the lower loads experienced that the ‘potential’ energy savings may be substantially reduced. Here, the leader of the Housing Studies Group of the British Gas Corporation's Research and Development Division argues that, when assessed on a common basis — namely the use of additional insulation causing a reduction in design heat loss of 1 kll' — the actual ‘loss’ is less than 5 therms a year. In fact the measured average saving is 70 therms a year for average UK weather.     

Promoting home ownership in a social‐rented city: policies,practices and pitfalls

Amsterdam's housing market is dominated by the social‐rented sector. It comprises 56 per cent of the total housing stock, while home ownership comprises only 19 per cent, lower than anywhere else in the Netherlands, and among the lowest in the world. Central government policy is currently seeking to increase the share of home ownership in the Netherlands from 53 per cent (2001) to 65 per cent in 2010. This paper will summarise recent national and local (Amsterdam) housing policy developments, focusing on the recent practice of selling social housing in Amsterdam. Unlike the Right to Buy scheme in Britain, the Netherlands employs an ‘offer to buy’ strategy. Sales, however, have been disappointing so far. Two factors were found to be crucial in this regard: (1) the sluggish change in ‘policy mentality’ and bureaucracy and (2) the high prices in the home ownership market. By way of conclusion, the paper reflects on the desirability of shifting the tenure structure from tenancy to ownership and on the risks that an (over‐) emphasis on home ownership may bring.     

Transforming Australia's Social Housing: Pointers from the British Stock Transfer Experience

The expanding provision of affordable housing by non-profit community housing organisations, coupled with possibilities of substantial stock transfer from State Housing Authorities, suggest Australia's social housing sector may be entering a transformative phase. Based on a review of restructuring in Britain, where over the last 25 years, traditionally owned and managed ‘council housing’ has been reduced from over 90 per cent to less than 30 per cent of overall social housing stock, this article considers possible policy implications for Australia. In particular, it analyses British experience which could inform Australian decisions on organisational size, institutional vehicles and governance structures within the context of the future programme of stock transfers envisaged by many commentators on the Australian housing scene.

     

Costs‐in‐use

This paper from the Head of the Costs‐in‐use Section at the UK Building Research Establishment suggests that constraints on the wide application of the concept in the UK derive partly from existing practices and procedures and partly from a misunderstanding of the concept's relevance. The term ‘costs‐in‐use’ would be better defined as ‘costs‐of‐defined‐performance'; and because of the fragmentary nature of the industry and unsatisfactory existing procedures, independent research is needed to clarify the true scope of this appraisal technique in the context of building procurement.