Elemental

These are my links for July 2nd through July 8th:

• Woobius Scribbles — Bottom-up collaboration in the construction industry – Excellent post on collaborative working by Woobius and the curse of email:"You know that feeling. You’ve just set up the best collaboration system ever. You have all the processes documented and approved. Everyone’s agreed to use the system. Things couldn’t be better. Then, the project kicks off and there comes that sinking feeling when you realise that everyone is bypassing your carefully tuned system.
  Everyone is sending emails instead."
• If zero carbon is the answer then just what was the question? « isite – Martin has an excellent rant and takes on Passivhaus amongst other issues pertaining to zero carbon: "Passivhaus is emerging as the aspirational darling or solution. But what is the true embodied energy of passivhaus, in particular the massive amounts of insulation, sheeting and duct tape? Passivhaus will reduce energy requirements and costs. Excellent. But I would love to see the payback time on the total and higher than normal embodied energies and waste."
• Tellytubby land: BedZed revisited – Building – Fantastic review of BedZed 7 years on. I was fully aware of the situation with the CHP, but less so with the allotments and car use issues. A long article, but very worthwhile reading.
• Climate change odds much worse than thought – MIT News Office – More doom, but presented in pretty roulette wheels. I ought to stop reading all this doom, but am strangely compelled to keep checking for confirming evidence. Behavioural economists, make of this what you will.: "The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well – such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries."
• The orders figures and public spending fears point to industry chaos ahead – need it be so? (Brickonomics) – I'm in broad agreement with Brian on this:"What firms should be doing now is assessing what they are good at and what they are not good at, what makes them profit, what costs them time and resources unprofitably.
  They should focus on quality of earnings not volume of earnings.
  They should focus effort on what they are good at and judiciously shed the operations that are weak….
  That however does not alter the reality that this recession will be cruel and that the industry has no choice but to retreat. Turnover overall must fall. Competition does need to be taken out of the market.
  It is better that firms recognise their weaknesses and retreat from them than seek to bid unrealistically against those better placed.
  The worst of all outcomes would be to lose good firms because of the woeful bidding by weak operations desperate to win work at any price."
• We don’t know what is coming next – so get ready – The Regeneration Blog – Jackie's advice on getting ready for a potential change in administration: "But in the meantime, my current advice is this: you know not what is coming next, so get as ready as you can. Have a total clear out (in every sense), trim down, strip back everything and establish your priorities.
  Swot up on localism and reconnect with your bottom-up roots. If you are able to deliver decent outputs (notably jobs or homes) you will be safe even if – or perhaps especially if – as we suspect, the RDA's get wiped away and their responsibilities are given to County Councils and the like. "
• Sustainable Design Tools Exhibited at AIA 2009: AECbytes Feature Article – Excellent review of the latest 'sustainable design' software tools available on the market, including Ecotect (aligned with Autodesk and therefore AutoCAD – very popular with architects), IES (my favourite) and TAS and Hevacomp (which are now both owned by Bentley (the home of AutoCAD rival Microstation). Whatever happened to Cymap? Seem to have been left behind…
• PlanningBlog: When did everyone get so cynical? « – "Regeneration is quite often seen as big business riding roughshod over local people’s wishes. It’s eyed with suspicion and written off as ‘ a waste of taxpayers money’ before it’s even come out of the ground.
  This all ties in with the wider anti-politician backlash currently sweeping the country. Politicians and anyone in authority are seen as ‘out to line their own pockets’ and anything they propose or champion is therefore, by association, a bad thing.
  Of course we should question authority and challenge things we don’t agree with but whatever happened to taking something at face value? A much needed regeneration of an area might actually be just that, not a conspiracy or an attempt to get one over on the general public.
  I’m not sure what the answer is to this. … Perhaps the problem is with the politicians themselves and only political reform can ‘reconnect’ and re-build trust between the people and those in authority."
• Government ends energy bulbs scheme – The IET – Some sensible news: "Power companies will no longer be able to mail out millions of energy-saving light bulbs to meet their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions from homes.
  The Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) has announced changes to the Government scheme requiring energy suppliers to cut emissions from homes, including an end to the direct mail out of low-energy light bulbs by January 1, 2010."

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These are my links for March 24th through March 29th:

• Lack of integration threatens UK’s sustainable buildings – Nothing new here – what are we going to do about it?: "The report argues that the "large number of interfaces" between the parties to the construction process, coupled with "high transaction costs and risk of duplication and re-work", serves a body blow against efforts to the rapid growth of sustainable buildings. It recommends that at the start of a project, "an integrated project delivery team with in-depth knowledge of the construction process" must be put in place."
• Design for Homes – Continuing Professional Development (CPD) – Masses of CPD pdf's – including articles from Pooran Desai and loads on sustainable communities.
• Transsolar Climate Engineering: Moderating The Design Process- 3/1/2009 – Building Design & Construction – "Among the participants were two German engineers, Matthias Schuler and Thomas Auer, who, according to Schuler, came away from the project with two overriding ideas. The first was that the most energy-efficient buildings they studied had been designed from the start with the target of reducing energy consumption—holistically, not as an afterthought.
  The second grand idea was that the “conversation” between architects and engineers was halting, at best. “Engineers think in numbers, architects think in pictures,” Schuler recalls. “There was a need for a moderator”—an entity that would iterate ideas back and forth between members of the Building Team to enable them to integrate the physical elements of any building project to produce the optimal solution."
• Architects are creating toxic ‘killing machines’ – Building Design – "Architects are creating “killing machines” by not considering the toxicity of the materials used in buildings, America’s leading sustainability expert William McDonough said this week."
• The Four Sins of LEEDwashing: LEED Green Buildings That Perhaps Aren’t Really Green : TreeHugger – 1) The Sin of Not Following Through
  2) The Sin of Valuing Gizmos Over Appropriate Design
  3) The Sin of Laughably Inappropriate Use
  4) The Sin of Wretched Excess.
• BRE-PassivHaus-Primer.pdf (application/pdf Object) – Passivhaus is flavour of the month at the minute. Nice 8 page pdf explaining the principles and the differences between passive and passiv.

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If, like me, you have been tearing your hair out, trying to get your head around Part L since long before April this year, this book may help alleviate some of those stresses. Available from RIBA and NBS, the Guide costs £25. The RIBA blurb is below:

Guide to Part L is a thoroughly researched, in-depth guidance for architects, construction professionals and building control officers about the complex new regulations governing the conservation of fuel and power in buildings. More than a general overview, this guide cuts through the jungle of new provisions and requirements to provide a logical, straightforward road map to compliance.

Guide to Part L comprises detailed step-by-step guidance to every section of the new four-part document, highlighting essential points and anomalies, and is illustrated by invaluable process flowcharts. It is backed up by extensive appendices that give further information about almost every issue affecting compliance, including: target emission rates, SAP, SBEM, U-values, overheating, air permeability, efficient boilers and controls, insulation, ventilation, efficient air conditioning, efficient light fittings, commissioning, log books and how to assess ‘simple payback’.

Written by the Building Performance Group at the BRE and published by NBS (the official publishers of the Approved Documents), this guide has been written specifically from the building professional’s perspective and will make the difficult Part L more easily assimilated and applied.

“Thankfully there is now a guide that unpicks these unfamiliar and rather tortuous new requirements … I can see it becoming a genuinely important reference work for architects, construction professionals and even building control officers as they grapple with the new approach”. Bill Gething, of Feilden Clegg Bradley LLP, chair of the RIBA Sustainable Futures Committee and the RIBA President’s Advisor on Sustainability.

Note the language used in the review: complex, jungle, anomalies, difficult. Putting it mildly, I think. In the Foreword to the book, Bill Gething describes the regulations as ‘unfamiliar and rather tortuous’.

The highlight of the book for me are the flow charts and the appendices, but there are plenty of other nuggets of information. Many of these I had surmised already, but it is gratifying to see the experts agree with me:

• It is likely that U-values will have to exceed the standards of Part L 2002 in order to meet the TER
• It will probably be necessary to design for an air permeability better than 10m³/h.m²@50Pa, particularly in buildings with mechanical ventilation and air conditioning
• 2 calculations may be required for BER (Building Emission Rate) – a design stage which identifies the critical features of the design that will affect the energy performance of the building, and the second one when the building is completed. This version includes the actual results of air permeability, ductwork leakage and fan performance tests.
• Solar gain needs to be controlled in areas which do not include comfort cooling (does this seem wrong to anyone else? Surely this encourages the use of comfort cooling, because by the time the solar overheating problem is identified, the building fabric and form are fairly fixed, and the only option for compliance is to add comfort cooling. The moral of the story being that architects will need to realise what an impact their design has on compliance at a very early stage)
• Ductwork on systems served by fans with a design flow rate greater than 1m³/s should be tested for leakage

The one disappointment with the document is a lack of clarification on energy efficient building services and LZC technologies. Instead the book refers the reader to the ‘Non-Domestic Heating, Cooling and Ventilation Compliance Guide’ (pdf) and ‘Low or Zero Carbon Energy Sources: Strategic Guide‘ (pdf), neither of which are particularly light reading. I was hoping the Guide to Part L would fill the gaps between these two documents and the SBEM tools (including Hevacomp).

The intention of Part L 2006 was to conserve fuel and power in the built environment. The manifestation appears to be a complex, misunderstood calculation which whilst academically sound, does not lend itself well to how the industry operates today. The luxury of a period of time where the architect and engineer could fine tune the design using an iterative process before going out to tender is harping back to the ‘good old days’ when we used to have time to draw every pipe out in double line. Perhaps this change in regulations will see a return to longer design lead times? It will certainly require a greater deal of collaboration between the architect and the engineer at an earlier stage of design. It is not in the architect’s interest to design the fabric and form without consideration to Part L compliance and the building services, as this will undoubtably drive the capital cost of the building up, as technologies are added to the building in an effort to make it comply.

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