Natural ventilation can significantly reduce energy costs for cooling homes. Cross ventilation and the stack effect allow air to flow through homes passively. Properly placing windows, doors, and vents maximizes these effects. Landscaping and building orientation also impact natural ventilation by influencing air flow and heat gain. Daylighting design considers illumination levels, window placement, and solar shading to maximize natural light and minimize energy use for artificial lighting.
Natural ventilation can significantly reduce energy costs for cooling homes. Cross ventilation and the stack effect allow air to flow through homes passively. Properly placing windows, doors, and vents maximizes these effects. Landscaping and building orientation also impact natural ventilation by influencing air flow and heat gain. Daylighting design considers illumination levels, window placement, and solar shading to maximize natural light and minimize energy use for artificial lighting.
Natural ventilation can significantly reduce energy costs for cooling homes. Cross ventilation and the stack effect allow air to flow through homes passively. Properly placing windows, doors, and vents maximizes these effects. Landscaping and building orientation also impact natural ventilation by influencing air flow and heat gain. Daylighting design considers illumination levels, window placement, and solar shading to maximize natural light and minimize energy use for artificial lighting.
Natural ventilation can significantly reduce energy costs for cooling homes. Cross ventilation and the stack effect allow air to flow through homes passively. Properly placing windows, doors, and vents maximizes these effects. Landscaping and building orientation also impact natural ventilation by influencing air flow and heat gain. Daylighting design considers illumination levels, window placement, and solar shading to maximize natural light and minimize energy use for artificial lighting.
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NATURAL VENTILATION
Passive cooling: Up to a third of the energy costs in the average home goes toward temperature control, i.e., fans and air-conditioners. Homeowners can save a lot of money if their homes are designed to be cool in the first place. Maximize cross-ventilation by designing doors and windows to take advantage of prevailing winds. (There are Internet resources that plot the prevailing winds in your area.)
Take advantage of the “stack effect”: Warm air rises as cooler air comes in. Placing vents along the ceiling allows warm air to escape, resulting in cooler interiors. Water installations, such as koi ponds can lower the ambient temperature by as much as one full degree through evaporative cooling. Situate them so they cool the air as it enters the house. Minimize heat gain by plotting the sun’s path beforehand (computer software has been developed just for this purpose) and designing preventive measures for the hottest parts of the house, such as using adobe or stone to insulate against heat, or lengthening roof eaves to provide shade. A more expensive technological solution is to use argon-gas filled glass windows that block heat rays from solar radiation. A more economical solution is window film that filters out harmful UV radiation while letting light in.
Allow for cross ventilation
Cross ventilation is a natural form of wind ventilation that drives air from openings at one side of a structure through to the other. Its success depends on the tightness of the building envelope, the position and size of your openings (windows, doors, vents) as well as the path in between the two sides of the house.
Play with squeeze points
When wind enters through a smaller opening and exits through a bigger opening, that’s a ‘squeeze point.’ This creates a natural vacuum which increases wind velocity. “We usually incorporate squeeze points into our designs, but in an existing home, you can actually create the same effect by opening the window or door receiving the breeze a little less than the one on the opposite wall.” One just needs to understand where the wind comes from at different times of the year, as the wind changes depending on the month. Let the prevailing wind enter at an oblique angle You get better air circulation when the wind enters the opening of your structure at an oblique angle of about 45-50 degrees. When wind passes through an oblique angle, it causes interior air to be more turbulent, allowing air to hit the corners of the structure.
Create a stack effect
A stack effect is when warmer, lighter indoor air is displaced by cooler and denser outdoor air. If you create an opening high in the building and another low in the building, this causes a natural flow. If the air inside your structure is hotter than the air outside, the stack effect will make it float out the top opening, to be replaced with cooler air from outside.
Landscape Let air pass through shaded areas to keep the air cool. Trees, if properly placed, can be used to cool incoming air. Vegetation can also be used to funnel wind and free air movement maintained around the structure. Plants and grass also greatly reduce ground temperature, compared to hard surfaces like concrete which have more heat gain.
Window Characteristics that Affect Air Flow
Windows, skylights and roof windows affect air flow depending on their operator type— projecting versus sliding—and their placement.
Casement and projecting windows can typically be fully opened, allowing for greater ventilation. An outward-projecting sash may help direct outdoor air into a room. Under harsher wind conditions, however, inward-projecting sashes may be more feasible. Sliding windows have more limited openings of less than half of the overall window area. Mechanically or manually operable skylights or roof windows allow rising warm air to exit and be replaced by cooler outdoor air entering through open windows at a lower level. Window placement (location and size of opening) will affect occupant cooling if air is moving fast enough. The average interior air velocity is a function of:
the exterior wind velocity;
the angle at which the wind strikes the opening; and the size of the opening.
The diagram and table below demonstrate how the size, number, and location of the openings will affect the air flow (Brown and DeKay, 2001).
Average Interior Air Velocity as a Percentage of the Exterior Wind Velocity
opening height as a fraction of wall height 1/3 opening width as a fraction of wall width 1/3 2/3 3/3 single opening 12-14% 13-17% 16-23% two openings in same wall — 22% 23% two openings in adjacent walls 37-45% 37-45% 40-51% two openings in opposite walls 35-42% 37-51% 47-65% range = wind 45° perpendicular to opening Source: Sun, Wind & Light, G.Z. Brown and Mark DeKay, 2001.
Casement windows can be used to deflect air into a room (plan view).
NATURAL LIGHTING Looking at Lighting in Commercial Buildings Architects and their professional teams consider certain factors to successfully combine natural and artificial lighting in reaching maximum benefits for building occupants and owner operations. Distinguish Illumination from Lighting Light and illumination are technically not the same thing, therefore should be approached differently when it comes to specifications. Light is measured in terms of lumens while illumination, in lux. Lumens refers to the amount of light coming from a source while lux measures the intensity of that light.
When designing lighting, it is important to carefully differentiate these two
instead of taking them on as a combined factor. Each space reacts differently to varying lumens and lux requirements. Using the same specification for all spaces could waste of unnecessary energy, time and most of all, the project’s long-term operation and management costs.
Define and compute for the lighting capacity strategically so you can better explore ambiance effects without sacrificing a lot of aesthetic intentions and still meet the energy saving objectives.
Situate windows and doors to make full use of natural sunlight and minimize the need for artificial light.
Solar tubes and skylights are a low-cost solution for interior parts of the house without accessible windows.
Orient Building Fenestration
Sunlight, sun path orientation, position of windows and any other building openings make way for determining the kind and amount of artificial lighting that could be allowed into the building. In the Philippines, the rising sun from the East side and the prevailing winds from the Northeast Monsoon suggests that most windows or openings could be positioned to take advantage of that direction. However, capturing daylighting does not stop in only finding the right positions for windows or openings. To take full advantage of natural lighting, other factors such as glare, ceiling slopes, latitudes are also taken into design considerations. Careful planning can bring further occupant health and disposition benefits from the natural light that comes in a given space, thus validating the recommended amount of artificial lighting integrated into a building can be a valuable asset to any commercial projects. DAYLIGHTING TECHNIQUES
Top light Daylighting Methods
One of the most common ways to introduce daylight is through skylights and other means of top lighting. Top lighting behaves as direct electric lighting does—by radiating light downward. Principles commonly used for designing electric lighting systems can also be used for top lighting, which is the easiest form of daylighting and is relatively unaffected by site orientation and adjacent buildings. Here are several classic prototypes for top lighting: Sidelight Daylighting Method Side lighting employs vertical fenestration (usually windows) to introduce natural light. Unlike top lighting, side lighting tends to introduce light that can be too bright relative to the room surfaces, sometimes causing glare. However, the desirable view provided by windows usually makes glare an acceptable side effect. One way to increase both efficiency and clarity is to employ solar shading other than within the glass. Solar shading uses building elements to prevent direct solar radiation from entering the space during the cooling season.
o Overhung soffits, canopies, and awnings are the most common forms of external solar shading, while blinds, curtains, and shades are the most common forms of interior shading. Solar shading is difficult to design for east- and west facing façades because preventing direct solar penetration very early or very late on a summer day is impossible without blocking the view.
o Interior shading devices should have a reflective surface to reflect
unwanted light back outdoors. Dark shades prevent glare but absorb solar energy and become warm, heating the space. Adjustable exterior shading devices are probably the best means of shielding windows, but architectural and/or construction cost limitations may prevent their use.
Many modern buildings employ a light shelf to shade the lower part of the window, or view glazing, permitting clearer glass. The top of the shelf is reflective, intended to bounce light inward and onto the ceiling, which provides for deeper light penetration and improved interior light quality. The daylight glazing is generally darker or more reflective than the view glazing to prevent direct solar radiation and glare from a bright sky.
A light shelf is designed to scoop direct solar radiation into the room and onto the ceiling, where it becomes diffuse indirect light, one of the best types of light for both work and comfort. A light shelf can increase the depth of penetration of daylight by 100% or more, but only when it captures and redirects direct rays of the sun. A light shelf has limited benefit with diffuse light, as from sky without sun and on cloudy days. In general, light shelves work best on the south side of the building.
