This paper uses a forensic building performance evaluation approach to undertake a comparative evaluation of the in-use energy and environmental performance data (collected over two years) of two civic buildings located in Southeast England – a small community centre (<1000m2) and a medium-sized public library building (~4500m2), which are designed to high sustainability standards (EPC A rating) and low heating demand met by on-site low/zero carbon technologies. Although both buildings achieved measured air-permeability rates of ~5m3/hr.m2, they encountered similar issues related to poor documentation of ‘as-built’ drawings, poor handover and guidance, problems with integrating and maintaining new technologies (heat pumps, biomass boilers and solar thermal), lack of calibration of sub-meters, and issues with automatic window controls. However the actual carbon emissions of the community centre are double the predicted, while they are almost five times in the case of library building. This is because the community centre management team overcame some of the issues through their continuous engagement and interest in the building’s performance, whereas the management team of the Library building failed to engage with energy management, resulting in disuse of the biomass boiler and solar thermal system.
Gupta, RKapsali, MGregg, M
Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment\School of Architecture
Year of publication: 2017Date of RADAR deposit: 2017-06-12