Buildings physics

Creating healthy buildings

• Shadow analysis

  

  Heat gains through transparent surfaces are very important in the energy balance of low energy buildings consumption and especially nearly zero energy. therefore the shadows has to be evaluated in relation to surrounding buildings and natural landscaping...

• Shading device

  

  Solar radiation coming through glazed openings during the winter contributes to minimize energy needs to heating but also increasing energy demand for cooling in the summer. The shading device if well-designed and sized allow to optimizing solar gains and can still help to reduce the cooling loads in warm months helping to improve the human well-being (thermal comfort, visual, ...).

• Thermal bridge

  

  Building envelopes are made opaque and transparent elements like walls, roofs, windows and ceilings but also include edges, corners and connections influence energy balance and indoor space comfort. The incidence of thermal bridges on the building heat losses become an important voice as the performance envelope is increasing. In buildings with high efficiency thermal bridges should be almost zero.

• Moisture in buildings

  

  Internal control humidity conditions especially in buildings with high level of insulation and high airtightness, is an important aspect to ensure human well-being and comfortable space. We add to humidity levels in our home through our activities and lifestyle. A family of four can add moisture to the air equivalent to 10 litres of water every day. If humidity gets too high, problems will arise such as condensation, musty smells, mould growth, allergic reactions. To maintain a comfortable and healthy interior environment is important to know...

• Environmental comfort

  

  The concept of well-being as quality of living space is not easy to understand and define as many parameters influence the relationship between the human body and the environment. Through the definition of environmental requirements well-being classes can offer a high standard of living .

• Dynamic building simulation

  

  Dynamic building simulations has a strategic role to increase the annual performance of buildings including an assessment of new technical solutions. Buildings’ dynamic analysis is procedure to study effective building energy performance given real climate considerations and obtaining a very realistic and complete analysis, assessing in detail of different energy and comfort parameters.

• Airtightness

  

  A good airtightness of opaque and transparent building element minimize heat losses by air infiltration and avoid structural damage, mould growth, local thermal discomfort (draught, vertical temperature difference, radiant asymmetry, cold/warm floor,…).

• Thermography

  

  The evaluation of the quality of the built environment is not always visible to the naked eye. Thermography is a non-destructive diagnostic technique which detects infrared energy emitted from object, converts it to temperature and displays image of temperature distribution. An important information can be obtain as surface temperature distribution image data of buildings elements. Thermograpy greatly helps detecting energy losses of buildings