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By giving live dynamic feedback about design and performance of applied engineering standards, existing buildings offer better opportunities to the construction industry for testing green practices and designs, writes Christiane Faddoul
While it is easy to build new green buildings, existing buildings too can be refurbished to implement energy saving measures and practices.
Building’s envelope
Having a fixed location and orientation, an existing building’s structure cannot be relocated but its envelope’s performance could be improved by various methods. Starting with the building’s envelope, a building’s heat transfer can be reduced by applying suitably certified coating material to decrease internal temperature by more than 80C as well as significantly increasing the expected life of buildings roof. Many types and colours of coating are available to this end.
Control of air infiltration and ex-filtration: maintaining a positive air pressure inside a building ensures less dust and unwanted smell from circulating as well as minimizing air and humidity from uncontrolled infiltration. Straightforward tasks like closing unnecessary walls openings, sealing openings around AC ducts and similar cracks around windows and doors frameworks could dramatically maintain both indoor air quality and internal pressure.
Also controlled access of buildings by utilizing controlled access doors could achieve good savings besides benefiting from the security aspect.
Glazing: While reducing glass percentage and increasing shading can contribute to reducing solar heat gain from building’s glazing, it could be difficult to execute at all levels due to time, cost, and authorities approvals. Replacing current glass with improved U values glass type is quicker solution; while it also could be expensive option, new films that could adhere to glass surfaces have proven to substantially reduce heat gain too.
Circulation inside building
Knowing that car capacities cannot be modified, elevators and lift controls could be upgraded and improved for efficient operation by optimizing loading capacity, number of stops and waiting time. Sophisticated programs could be applied to control group of elevators to operate according to different modes (peak times and normal times).
Ventilation & air conditioning
Air conditioning units: By retrofitting new equipment that use environment friendly refrigerants, end users and owners will not only benefit from better performance and higher efficiency, but they will also participate in reducing the GHG emissions in the atmosphere. Industry standards such as ASHRAE90.1 indicate minimum requirements for equipment efficiencies.
If possible, switching to existing district cooling provider would also reduce Carbon emissions, although, that option turns out not to be cost effective in some locations where electricity tariffs schemes vary according to usage rates expressed in kWh. Pumps offer excellent opportunity to save energy because their actual performance can be compiled: using affinity laws, constant speed could be upgraded with controls to operate in variable speed, and blades could be trimmed.
Gas controlled ventilation: CO and CO2 controlled ventilation assists the ventilation system in supplying or exhausting the necessary amount of air in order to maintain the proper indoor air quality in parking areas and large conference halls. Fans could then operate based on demand requirements instead of running 24/24 full constant speed.
Lighting
Failing to prove their environmental benefits, fluorescent lights also tend to increase harmonics and noises in the electric circuits. Eventually, LED lights are likely to be the only lighting technology which is environmental friendly and energy efficient. With some limitation on light colours and units prices, LED could be the best and only replacement for existing light bulbs inside existing buildings. Right selection of lights associated with lighting control system can reduce up to 60% of total energy used by lighting.
Detecting leakages
Leakages could increase utilities bills by up to 5%. For example, water leakage which not only contributes in wasting water, but also it increases the number of start-up of pressure water pumps, causing hunting problems which damage pumps’ motors and plumbing systems. Water could deteriorate painting and finishing and false ceiling, and may cause the growth of molds and fungus.
When refurbishing or servicing, it is proper to locate leaking components, install new electric wires, seal ducts, or install new plumbing systems. To control utilities usage and leakage, perhaps electronic smart meters offer strong monitoring tools.
Other measures and solutions could be limiting smoking inside buildings to specific areas, which can be implemented without extra cost. Furthermore, it is possible to install PV panels and domestic wind turbines and to connect to TSE water: based on the availability of the product or service in local markets and the feasibility to procure them, implementing those measures should likely be facilitated by governmental authorities.
Conclusion
Existing buildings offer live dynamic feedback about design and performance of applied engineering standards; what better opportunities could construction industry have in order to test green practices and designs? These modifications coupled with proper facilities maintenance and operation, could be live examples for the future development to prove their effectiveness if adopted at the initial concept design of any new project.
There is enough scope to transform existing buildings into green buildings, which in turn can create new job opportunities and reduce energy demand as well as the pressure for building new power plants.
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COMMENT
It is good to read this article in Oman. Can you please talk about coating materials?