This monitoring study aims to generate field performance data from a highly energy efficient building in the west coast climate as part of FPInnovations’ efforts to assist the building sector in developing durable and energy efficient wood-based buildings. A six-storey mixed-use building, with five storeys of wood-frame residential construction on top of concrete commercial space was completed in early 2018 in the City of Vancouver. It was designed to meet the Passive House standard. The instrumentation aimed to gather field data related to the indoor environment, building envelope moisture performance, and vertical movement to address the most critical concerns among practitioners for such buildings.
This paper presents energy and environmental performance analyses, a study of summer indoor temperatures and occupant behavior for an eight story apartment building, with the goal to combine high energy efficiency with low environmental impact, at a reasonable cost. Southern Portvakten building is built with prefabricated timber elements...
This report documents the instrumentation installed for monitoring moisture, indoor air quality and differential movement performance in a six-storey building located in the City of Vancouver. The building has five storeys of wood-frame construction above a concrete podium, providing 85 rental units for residential and commercial use...
The Canterbury earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 caused significant damage to the Christchurch building stock. However, it is an opportunity to build more comfortable and energy efficient buildings. Previous research suggests a tendency to both under heat and spot heat, meaning that New Zealand dwellings are partly heated and winter indoor temperatures do not always meet the recommendations of the World Health Organization. Those issues are likely to be explained by design deficiency, poor thermal envelope, and limitations of heating systems.
In that context, the thesis investigates the feasibility of building an energy efficient and cost-competitive house in Christchurch. Although capital costs for an energy efficient house are inevitably higher, they are balanced with lower operating costs and improved thermal comfort. The work is supported by a residential building project using Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) panels. This atypical project is compared with a typical New Zealand house (reference building), regarding both energy efficiency and costs.
The current design of the CLT building is discussed according to passive design strategies, and a range of improvements for the building design is proposed. This final design proposal is determined by prioritizing investments in design options having the greatest effect on the building overall energy consumption. Building design features include windows efficiencies, insulation levels, optimized thermal mass, lighting fixture, as well as HVAC and domestic hot water systems options. The improved case for the CLT building is simulated having a total energy consumption of 4,860kWh/year, which corresponds to a remarkable 60% energy savings over the baseline.
The construction cost per floor area is slightly higher for the CLT building, about 2,900$/m² against
2,500$/m² for the timber framed house. But a life cycle cost analysis shows that decreased operating costs makes the CLT house cost-competitive over its lifetime. The thesis suggests that the life cycle cost of the CLT house is 14% less than that of the reference building, while the improved CLT design reaches about 22% costs savings.
Nowadays, it is possible to build zero-energy houses or even positive energy buildings. Nevertheless, many incoherencies exists if we attach importance to the embodied energy of its constructions. The present paper lays on the logic of structural insulat...
Project contact is Guido Wimmers at University of Northern British Columbia
Summary
The WIRL has a footprint of 30m x 30m on a raft slab foundation and consists of shop space equipped with a concrete strong wall and floor and a crane bay, as well as a portion of the building that will consist of a two-storey office space. The structural system will be predominantly wood with glulam post and beam with a set of trusses for the middle span. The building envelope and mechanical systems is high performance in order to achieve Passive House certification. This phase 2 is for the data acquisition and analysis from the building sensors and energy meters. A data acquisition (DAQ) system will be created to monitor the performance of the building over the next few years and store the data in an accessible, organized fashion. The building temperature, relative humidity and metering data will be used to evaluate if all the models and calculations created for the WIRL during the design phase are reasonably close to reality and if the high performance wood structure is as energy efficient as predicted.
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