La Reunión Nacional de Cuadros

§ 3.1

Introduction

The previous chapter described the external factors that influence the thermal heat balance of the building and the way dynamic information about these external factors can be obtained to improve the level of detail in information about supply of thermal energy by the outdoor thermal environment and thermal comfort demand by the occupant and how these two aspects can be combined to determine the influence on the indoor thermal environment by the control system of the Adaptive Thermal Comfort System.

This chapter describes a literature review to determine which possibilities for adaptivity are usual in practice and which improvements and new techniques can be implemented to increase these possibilities for adaptivity of the Adaptive Thermal Comfort System. Research questions will be defined for chapter 4 and 5 how to use this adaptivity of the elements. Furthermore, this chapter describes common practice in comfort delivery and their opportunities to improve adaptivity of these aspects.

§ 3.2

Research Design

§ 3.2.1

Problem statement

To create and Adaptive Thermal Comfort System, current knowledge of the ways to provide thermal comfort and to dynamically adapt building settings to provide comfort only where, when and at the level needed by the user, while harvesting the energy delivered naturally when available and determine opportunities for improvement of the current techniques and openings for development of new concepts to dynamically adapt these settings.

§ 3.2.2

Research questions

What adaptive techniques for a thermal comfort system (the whole of passive and active components of the building that influence the indoor thermal environment) of a dwelling are now available and which opportunities for improvement and development of new techniques are there?

§ 3.2.3

Structure

A literature study is performed to map the state of the art in thermal comfort delivery for dwellings in the following sections, complemented with points of improvement for adaptivity and energy performance.

Spatial layout (§ 3.3)

The various aspects of the spatial layout of the dwelling that influence the thermal environment which are very important to regard before designing the adaptiveness of the materialisation and the HVAC system are observed. These aspects will be taken into account in chapter 5 as preconditions to ensure the proper functioning of the Adaptive Thermal Comfort System. Additionally, adaptive opportunities to be researched for these aspects in the future are given.

Materialisation (§ 3.4)

Current practice of materialisation of the dwelling to beneficially influence the thermal environment indoors without applying energy are described and the current methods to adapt the characteristics of the building. Additionally the opportunities of improvement are given as well as chances to develop new concepts for adaptivity.

HVAC (§ 3.5)

To correct the indoor thermal environment created by the weather and the building shell to fit the thermal comfort requirements of the occupants, HVAC systems are applied that use energy to influence the thermal environment. This section describes the current methods of the HVAC system to be controlled with the possibilities for improvement and new implementation of existing techniques.

Control systems for thermal comfort systems (§ 3.6)

To correct the indoor thermal environment created by the weather and the building shell to fit the thermal comfort requirements of the occupants, systems are applied that use energy to influence the thermal environment. This section describes the methods of control of the thermal comfort system used and the necessity and methods to reduce the consumption of energy.

§ 3.3

Spatial layout

Much energy saving can be gained from “optimizing” the spatial layout and the building shell before the actual materialisation of the shell and installing the HVAC system. To optimally profit from the Adaptive Thermal Comfort System the spatial layout needs to be considered for the influence on the performance of the adaptive measures for materialisation and HVAC.

Furthermore, the design can improve the awareness of the outdoor thermal

environment experienced by the occupant which benefits the comfort experience and health as described in § 2.3 (Healy, 2008).

§ 3.3.1

Adaptiveness of the spatial layout

Making the spatial layout dynamic can be very labour intensive in the user phase because sometimes large building parts need to be moved and they can have high investment costs because of their complexity and amount of material needed. Furthermore, they are so design specific that it is a whole different field of research to determine the effects of these adaptive solutions; therefore, this will not be the scope of this thesis and this section will not produce research questions. However, there are many possibilities to do so and developing these possibilities to make them more lucrative can certainly enhance the concept of an Adaptive Thermal Comfort System; consequently, to be complete some implementations of the solutions are briefly described and examples in practice are given which are illustrations of thinkable scenarios for adaptive design. It should be noted that most examples influence more than one aspect of spatial layout.

Partitioning

In recent history in the Netherlands many homes were built with a living space with en- suite separation doors (Figure 3.1). Those where often used to reduce the space to be heated in winter and in summer the doors can be left open to support cross ventilation. This technique can be used for different kind of rooms. Even the whole dwelling could be designed to be able to remove walls and doors.

FIGURE 3.1 En-suite separation from 1920

Flexible and multiple space use

The separation of the living space into two oppositely oriented rooms also gives the opportunity to swap the room functions from summer to winter, which creates flexible space use. An example of a flexible floor plan is the Rietveld Schröderhuis (Figure 3.2). This house can change from day setting to night setting, mainly designed to save space. However this principle could also be used to adapt to the changing climate or comfort demands. This solution is a combination of partitioning and multiple space use. To be able to switch functions rapidly some furniture can be made flexible as well. The flexible space layout can influence the air volume (D.1), the orientation (D.2), shell surface (D.3) and the ventilation design (D.4) of the function if one function can take place in more than one space.

FIGURE 3.2 Rietveld Schröderhuis day and night layout and the kitchen (redrawn from (Rietveld, 1888-1964)

The use of multiple spaces with thermal diversity is researched in the book

Environmental Diversity in Architecture, Chapter 12 (Merghani, 2004). The advantage of this multiple space use above the former mentioned flexible space use is that no conversions of furniture or moving around with doors and panels is required; however, the disadvantage of is that it takes a lot of space, which can be a problem in an urban environment. Figure 3.3 shows an example of a floor-plan of a vernacular house which allows the occupants to use multiple outdoor spaces for the same activities during the course of the day (Merghani, 2004).

FIGURE 3.3 Example of a floor-plan with a large diversity in thermal environments, used in study for thermal comfort and spatial diversity (Merghani, 2004)

Revolving structures

To change the orientation of the spaces relative to the sun without having to change room the house should be able to rotate. There are some experimental designs that incorporate this technique, as the Everingham Rotating House, designed and built by Luke Everingham in Australia (Figure 3.4) (Everingham, 2014). This technique is expensive and the possibilities are limited in high density residential areas.

FIGURE 3.4 The Everingham Rotating House (Everingham, 2014)

Surface to volume ratio

The geometry of the building shell can change, however not without affecting the volume of the indoor space. A closable patio or sun-space (Figure 3.7) can change the ratio between the surface of the external separation and the volume of the conditioned space. However, chances are the occupants will permanently use the pace as indoor space.

Airflow propagation

The organisation of spaces and openings greatly determines the airflow through the building and this can be used to enhance possibilities for natural ventilation. There are several techniques that allow the spatial layout to influence the airflow through the building. By opening and closing openings the capacity of the ventilation can be controlled. Obstructions should be carefully considered. Three main principles can enhance the airflow;