Our monthy-ish Inspiration - March 2022
This is Climetric's March 2022 inspiration; in this newsletter we share interesting software tools, sustainable products, some of our innovations and inspiring projects!
Working in a complex space It's in the space of complexity that we're most comfortable. Air temperature isn't all there is to thermal comfort. The experience is a combination of all sorts - movement, clothes, the feeling of air moving, heat radiating on the skin and more. By considering all of these factors, we are able to make complex spaces feel comfortable. And we are able to achieve comfort in a more sustainable way. With our careful in-depth analysis, we have been able to turn glass houses into wedding venues, make safari tents in Africa more enjoyable under the blazing sun, decrease energy costs in air halls, and improve outdoor comfort levels or city block developments. On the left, you can see a complex challenge: turning a Glass House into a sustainable wedding venue (high internal load!). We did many detailed analyses; glazing, shading, sun angles, surface temperatures, and more. The result is a variety of shading strategies, a hybrid displacement ventilation system and floor cooling to temper the space. Keep your space comfortable - are you working on an atrium, luxury accommodation, scenic restaurant space, complex tensile structure or an outdoor venue? Would you like to make sure it's comfortable? Click here to get in touch.
Chips Co-working
Anderson Perry Partnership Architects
Cape Town
The Chips co-working office is now in full operation!
We just love this workspace! The best co-working space in Cape Town has moved into their cool new office building. For those of you who are still looking for a co-working space, this is one that should be on your shortlist. It's super comfortable!
We were involved throughout the entire process - from the inspiration session, to the Climetric parametrics, to the detailed engineering and commissioning of the innovative systems. With our support, it was possible to maintain the original facade. The main trick we used: low-e blinds, blinds with a “comfort coating”. In summer, the blinds heat up significantly when hit by direct sunlight (can be 60°C!). However, the coating prevents the hot radiator experience. In addition, the blinds act as a reflector for the activated floors' temperature. The heating from the floors in winter, and cooling in summer, is reflected by the facade, keeping the space more comfortable. And the solar heat from the facade? This is directly extracted between the blinds and the window, by an extract fan. This innovative system is fully automated and operates on a cost-effective Somfy system.
Let's work together to ensure that your office building becomes more energy efficient. Let us know if you want to learn more.
Building photos by Paris Brummer
https://www.parisbrummer.com/
Chips Cape Town
Small building, big savings? Residential - Ton Alterna Architect Vlissingen - The Netherlands Big savings are easy on a big project, does our formula also work for smaller buildings? Ton Altena contacted us when he was working on a 85m2 building, a three-story building in the historic centre of Vlissingen. To best assist Winand, the owner of the building, we looked at the Climetric Parametric Analysis and performed a Detailed System Analysis. In our workshop with the client, the value of our Climetric analysis was shown. The client’s design choices made were not as we expected, but because our parametric analysis had the answers ready, we were able to adjust and find the best design that suited the client's wishes. And did it work? In the short term, there is a €1500 saving (including our consulting fee) and when also considering the energy costs for a 15-year period, using a conservative energy price escalation, the saving will be about €15000,-. Do you want to save money on your residential renovation project? Talk to us. Together, we'll review the possibilities and find potential savings.
What else?
More inspiration, tools, tips, and things to take note of.
For a project in Jonkershoek (Stellenbosch, South Africa) the local context for our analysis is beautiful. See the image on the right. (How? We used Gismo)
Green School South Africa is now on Arch Daily! We are very proud that we contributed our skills to this project! We were involved with the sustainable comfort engineering and water engineering for the school.
Etienne went back to school! He is now officially prepped of the new release of SANS XA Edition 2 in South Africa! If you not sure how to best get your project through these new regulations? Our parametrics are the perfect tool to help you design a SANS XA compliant building. Get in touch.
We stumbled upon this very interesting planting analysis tool, Pando. It does a lot, but in short, you should be able to use it for your outdoor comfort analysis and your water drainage/consumption calculations. We're still in the early testing phase and will let you know if we think it's worth it. Are you using Pando? Let us know what you think of Pando?
Did you see this post about open-Modelica? We want to enable the smaller engineering firms with the tools required to design the new sustainable systems that are needed to make a change (e.g. energy storage, load and generation offset, no constant efficiency). It's something we are still working on in the background! For now a small update: we are almost ready to start implementing it in all our projects. And Modelon has helped us with a temporary licence to get us going! Many thanks, Modelon!