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AECB Passivhaus guide published |
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14 Jul 2009, 4:57 PM
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The AECB has published its long awaited construction design guidance for designers and builders, helping them to deliver buildings aiming at the Passivhaus and AECB Gold standard.
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The guidance, previewed at this year's AECB conference, looks at the design and construction of floors, walls and roofs with the very high thermal performance needed to meet Passivhaus standards, and the higher levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes. It will allow members to rapidly gain an understanding of the 'hows and whys' of advanced energy-efficient construction practice.
The guidance gives in depth design advice, and an 'energy literate' commentary that accompanies the 40 sample construction details. It effectively translates advanced and practicable North American and Continental ultra-low energy construction experience into a UK context.
The main elements -- and the all important junctions between them -- are covered for three main building types: load bearing masonry, concrete frame and timber frame.
The guidance concentrates on tackling the two areas in which many UK buildings most singularly fail to perform well thermally; poor airtightness and high thermal bridging. It offers ways to meet Passivhaus requirements for 'thermal bridge free' details, equivalent to a y-value less than 0.03 in SAP calculations.
The guidance will be extended over time to cover additional construction types.
The Passivhaus and AECB Gold standards offer 80% or greater cuts in energy consumption compared with the measured average consumption of a typical building of the same type. High-performance buildings, free of energy sapping thermal defects and delivering high levels of comfort with low bills, can be achieved simply by good design. The AECB's new guidance gives designers the benefit of "pre-calculated" design details, enabling them to hit the ground running when designing truly low energy buildings.
Joint author of the guidance and AECB chief executive, Andy Simmonds explains that the guidance can be used on a number of levels. Developers, designers, specifiers, self builders etc will be able to rapidly build up a library of high performance ultra low energy construction details applicable to their individual preferred methods of construction, and when developing 'bespoke' details for individual projects. The guidance, with its clear explanations and vivid images of heat flux and isotherms, can also be used for awareness raising, educating and upskilling, and when communicating with clients.
"This guidance should really save time for architectural practices, because the well informed, practically minded and building physics-based approach adopted by the AECB will bring team members rapidly up to speed with advanced construction detailing," Simmonds says.
The guidance has been welcomed by hands-on practitioners and senior industry figures alike. John Tebbit, Industry Affairs Director of the Construction Products Association believes that guidance of this sort is very much needed: "It's good to see an organisation putting its money where its mouth is, and producing usable technical guidance to achieve high levels of energy efficiency.
"What I like about this series of standards is that it's the AECB's view of how to do it, consistent with what they believe, and you can go out and build it," he added.
"We don't need more people telling us what the problems are, we need more people giving us solutions like this. I'd like to see others producing guidance too. It will save people wasting time trying all the millions of ways that don't work."
VOLUME FIVE: CARBONLITE STEPS TWO & THREE DESIGN GUIDANCE: Passivhaus / Gold Standard is available as a free download to AECB members from www.carbonlite.org.uk/carbonlite.
Credits:: A German example of a Passivhaus
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| Positive review of this story |
Jim Race  |
18 Jul 2009, 5:57 AM |
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Some answers - at last! This is the sort of information we need (although I have not seen it yet) - not governments rabbiting on about ZERO carbon with no idea what that REALY means
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