Home: site context, climate change ( Heating Load)

Overheating is one of a problem for building design. As the fact of global climate change and temperature increasing, we need to reduce the energy consumption. When a person stay long period in experiencing overheating in the house, it could make him/her feeling uncomfortable  or heat stress, also it may hurt people’s health. As the issue of global warming, overheating becomes a more seriously cause. Thus, NHBC foundation has a lot of guidance for designer to know more about overheating. 

In addition, there are two factors causes of overheating:

External heat gains- As mentioned of “external”, the heat come outside from the building. When the sunlight shining through the window, the heat will rise the temperature at interior of the dwelling. Besides, the top floor of the house may also affected by overheating as the sunlight shine on the roof directly, the occupant at the top floor may feel hot during the day time.

Internal heat gains- Bad ventilation design will led to insufficiently circulation remove heat from the building. Additional with lighting, service from the building (eg. water boiling system), cooking, the occupants themselves, could also brought out overheating problem. 

Oxley Wood is an example of solving the issue of overheating. As you can see the floor plan below, in terms of (Purge Ventilation). There is a balcony on every floor, and windows at the house northern and southern side. It can allows large amounts of air entry the home for circulation. As I mentioned EcoHat, it can also allow and improve the ventilation of the house. Second, for window design, all windows in Oxley Wood are double glazing windows, it helps to solve the problem of preventing sunlight directly entry to the house. Besides, solar shading structure (Photo A) could also help for blocking the sunlight directly entry to the house. But Oxley Wood does not have such feature for the dwellings. More information about heating load please refer: (http://www.architecture.com/Files/RIBAHoldings/PolicyAndInternationalRelations/Policy/Environment/PrinciplesLowCarbSUMnew.pdf)

(Photo A)

Sources: zerocarbonhub. (2012). OverheatingInHomes. Available: http://www.zerocarbonhub.org/resourcefiles/OverheatingInHomes8pp_2013_8March.pdf. Last accessed 17th Nov 2013.