CIVL 1210
Fundamental of Green Building
Lecture 5
Reduce Load
Jiachuan Yang
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Announcements
• Questions on HW#1 shall be sent to:
LI, Huiling hlign@[Link]
• Second Homework posted on Feb 28
• Start to think about your thesis Topic
• Case study at a building/area/topic of your selection
• Calculation needed with methods from lectures/additional sources
Pathway to Low-Carbon Design
• Source of Heat Gain Reduce Loads
• Internal heat gain
• External heat gain Passive Design
• Infiltration
• Ventilation
• External envelope Efficient Active Systems
• Reduce load Energy Recovery
• Natural ventilation
• Reduce heat gain through
windows On-site
Renewables
• Reduce heat gain through
roof/wall Carbon
Offsets
Agenda 01. Natural ventilation
02. Reduce heat gain through windows
03. Reduce heat gain through roof
Natural ventilation: motivation
• Building needs fresh air
• Natural ventilation has the potential to reduce cooling load
• Buildings always have internal heat gains, which requires cooling
• When outdoor environment is mild, ventilation can reduce building load
• Particularly useful in transitional periods / shouldering seasons
• Spring, Autumn
• Introducing cool outdoor air can reduce building cooling load
Natural ventilation: motivation
• Why housing between mountains and the sea is expensive
• Day time: cool air coming from the sea
• Night time: cool air coming from the mountain Fengshui (wind/water)
Natural ventilation: strategy
• Because the environment is always changing, flexibility and
controllability is the key
• Summer and Winter: reduce natural ventilation
• Spring and Autumn: increase natural ventilation
• Large natural ventilation + good air tightness
• Large natural ventilation provides you the potential when you need it
• Good air tightness provides you the capability to abandon it (closing
window)
Natural ventilation: driving force
Image from BSRIA
Types of natural ventilation
Thermal
Temperature
pressure
driven
driven Pressure driven and temperature driven
Image from BSRIA
Environment: Wind rose
• Wind is a vector
• Direction
• Speed
• Wind Rose graphs
• Distribution of wind speed and direction at
a particular location and at specific time
• Use this information to design building
orientation for maximum natural
ventilation
Environment: Wind rose
• Wind Rose in Hong Kong from Hong Kong Observatory
Environment: Wind rose
Design: building layouts
Not Desirable Desirable
Design: building layouts
Not Desirable Desirable
Design: openings
Image from the Whole Building Design Guide
Natural ventilation + thermal mass
• During the day, building is sealed and
heat is absorbed by thermal mass,
regulating temperature within the space
• At night, windows are opened and cold
air absorbs stored daytime heat, cooling
and “recharging” thermal mass
Agenda 01. Natural ventilation
02. Reduce heat gain through windows
03. Reduce heat gain through roof
Window thermal insulation
• Measures taken to reduce heat loss through conduction
• Structure: from single-pane to triple-pane
• Air gap: from air to Argon or Krypton
Window type U-value
4mm single-pane 5.8
4mm double-pane with 12mm air gap 2.9
4mm double-pane with 16mm Argon gap 1.7
4mm triple-pane with 16mm Argon gap 1.2
Source:
[Link]
WindowComponents_2020.pdf
Low-emissivity (low-e)
• Measures taken to reduce heat loss
through radiation
• Goal: reduces solar load while still
allowing diffuse daylight
• Strategy 1: low-e coating/window
• Coating with low-e materials
• High transmittance for visible
• Low transmittance for infrared and UV
Source:
[Link]
ponents_2020.pdf
Radiation
• Energy can travel through matter or vacuum as
electromagnetic waves
• Any matter with T > 0 K radiates energy, higher
temperature bodies emit radiation with shorter
wavelength (higher frequency) and with more
energy
shortwave: K
longwave: L
Radiation budget
• 𝑄 ∗ = 𝐾 ∗ + 𝐿∗ = 𝐾↓ − 𝐾↑ + 𝐿↓ − 𝐿↑
𝑄∗ : Net radiation
𝐾 ∗ : Net shortwave radiation
𝐿∗ : Net longwave radiation
𝐾↓ : Incident or incoming shortwave radiation
𝐾↑ : Upwelling or outgoing shortwave radiation
𝐿↓ : Incident or incoming longwave radiation
𝐿↑ : Upwelling or outgoing longwave radiation
Longwave Radiation
• Stephan-Boltzman law • Kirchhoff’s law • If there is no transmission
(e.g., when the radiation
hits a surface like the roof),
𝐿 = 𝜖𝜎𝑇 4 𝜖=𝜑 then
where L is the longwave 1=𝜑+α
flux density (W/m2), 𝜖 is where 𝜑 is the
the emissivity, 𝜎 is the absorptivity • Given that 𝜖 = 𝜑, one
Stephan-Boltzman further obtains
constant (𝜎 = 5.67 ×
10−8 𝑊 𝑚−2 𝐾 −4 ) and T is
the temperature (K). 1 = 𝜖 + α or α = 1 − 𝜖
Longwave Radiation
• Incoming (𝐿↓ ): from the atmosphere
+ absorbed by the surface
• Outgoing (𝐿↑ ): emitted (𝜖𝜎𝑇 4 )
𝐿∗ = 𝐿↓ − 𝐿↑ = 𝜖𝐿↓ - 𝜖𝜎𝑇 4
Shading
• Measures taken to reduce heat
loss through radiation
• Strategy 2: shading
• Static
• Horizontal overhangs
• Vertical fins
• Dynamic
• Operable blinds and shades
• Dynamic glass
• Trade-off between costs (initial,
maintenance) and benefits
Shading: internal vs. external
• External shading is much more effective in reducing radiation heat
gain than internal one, but difficult to control and maintain
Internal External
shading shading
Shading: design
• For static shading
• Parametric Design to optimize shape, orientation, size
Window thermal insulation: standard
qsolar = qcond + qrad = UA t + SHGC I solar
• The requirements of windows depend on local weather
• Cold region
• U-factor: low
• SHGC: any
• Hot region
• U-factor: can be higher
• SHGC: low
Source:
[Link]
o_energy_efficient_windows.pdf
Agenda 01. Natural ventilation
02. Reduce heat gain through windows
03. Reduce heat gain through roof
Cool roof
• Highly reflective roofs to
reduce solar heat gains
• A.k.a. white roof
Surface coating
Sandstone Khaki Khaki Down to Earth
White Simply change the color can
Down to Earth
Sun baked clay modify the surface temperature by
Terracotta
San Diego buff more than 10 oC
Fawn Sandstone White
New York City has painted about 7 million square
feet of tar rooftops white to lower temperatures.
Source: NASA
Shortwave Radiation
• Reflectance averaged over the shortwave band is often
known as surface albedo (𝛼)
• 𝐾↑ = 𝛼𝐾↓
• 𝐾 ∗ = 𝐾↓ − 𝐾↑ = (1 − 𝛼)𝐾↓
Example
Given the following condition over a dry rooftop surface:
Incoming shortwave radiation = 800 W m-2
Incoming longwave radiation = 200 W m-2
Albedo = 0.2 Emissivity = 0.9 Surface temperature = 25 oC
Estimate the net radiation Q* on the surface
𝑄∗ = 𝐾 ∗ + 𝐿∗ = 𝐾↓ − 𝐾↑ + 𝐿↓ − 𝐿↑
Radiative cooling
• Natural -- Radiative cooling to the universe
• Universe background temperature: 2.7K
• Radiative cooling at night
Green roof
Not Desirable Desirable
Green roof
• Additional insulation
• Reduce outside air
temperature, especially
near HVAC
• Thermal mass regulates
temperature swing
Photovoltaics Integrated Green Roof (PVIGR)
1. Triple carbon reduction and maximize land use by
1. Carbon neutral generation
2. Plant photosynthesis
3. Reducing building cooling load
2. Clear synergy
1. Evapotranspiration cooling
2. Dust removing
Photovoltaic Integrated Green Roof
(PVIGR) in Munich, Germany
[Link]
Summary
• Natural ventilation
• Controllability and flexibility is the key
• Driving force: thermal pressure & outdoor pressure
• Reduce thermal load from windows
• Heat conduction: U-value
• Heat radiation: SHGC
• Reduce thermal load from roof
• Reflective roof
• Green roof
• PVIGR
Announcements
• Questions on HW#1 shall be sent to:
LI, Huiling hlign@[Link]
• Second Homework posted on Feb 28
• Start to think about your thesis Topic
• Case study at a building/area/topic of your selection
• Calculation needed with methods from lectures/additional sources