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Project Overview

Construction

Occupancy

Behavioural models

Demand

Renewable technologies

Conclusion

Team

Acknowledgements

Construction

For the purpose of the project we have investigated 4 different wall constructions by modelling and simulating on ESP-r in order to compare building's energy performance, considering at the same time their embodied energy.

By clicking on the links above, one can navigate through the four wall constructions, the construction of roof and floor, their embodied energy as well as the results of the simulations

Below, there is a description about the building layout and the ESP-r model used.


ESP-r model

The next model will be used in ESP-r in order to assess the performance of different construction materials and to choose the best option regarding energy saving in terms of space heating and embodied energy assuming constant occupancy. It will also be used to assess the space heating needed within a year when the occupancy is variable.

The first step was to analyse the floor plans of the Craik prototype in order to create a model in ESP-r that could represent correctly the dimensions of the cabin. We got in contact with our industrial contact and we obtained the plans for the different type of cabins that were supposed to be built on site. We decided to use as our model the Stell Hill cabin, which floor plans are showed below:

                   house layout

After a careful inspection, we decided that the model used in ESP-r would be a box with the equivalent volume of the Stell Hill house rather than building the model with all the details, which it would be a very tough work and the results would be quite the same. The following calculations and assumptions were made:

After all these considerations the equivalent box of the Stell Hill cabin looked as follows:

                                        esp-r model