This month COADY is sharing how our design approach works to achieve adequate levels of daylight while avoiding potential over-heating from solar-gain in our buildings.

Overheating is a particular factor in occupant’s comfort and contributes to ⚡ Operational Energy in buildings, while natural daylight ☀️reduces a building’s reliance on artificial lighting and consequently its environmental impacts and operational costs.

Our experience over the years has informed different solutions in the sectors we work in – Schools, Commercials, Health  & Housing. In all cases there is a careful balance to be struck between providing adequate natural daylight for tasks, through appropriately sized windows, but avoiding the requirement for 🧊 active cooling which is energy hungry & harmful to the environment.

How we Optimize the Daylight vs. Overheating Balance⚖️:
✅ Minimising window sizes through accurate measurement – Model simulation to CIBSE LG10 at early design stages.
✅ Understand occupancy needs for different typologies and concentrate the provision of natural daylight to tasks.
✅ Specify glass that allows day-light in while minimising solar radiation – i.e low solar gain factors (g-value).
✅ Use passive cooling, for example create heat sinks by exposing thermal mass such as concrete structure

✅ Use landscape and adjacent structures to provide natural cooling & shading.

✅ Placement of balconies and overhangs or providing external solar shades.

Advocates for Improved Targets 🎯:

The RIAI Climate Challenge sets a target, for all buildings, to not exceed temperatures of 25-28 degrees maximum for 1% of all occupied hours. For homes specifically, CIBSE TM59 states that “all occupied rooms should not exceed an operative temperature of 26°C for more than 3% of the annual occupied hours.” This same standard is adopted by both HPI and BREEAM.

COADY Architect’s commitment is to delivering specific educational/healthcare/residential projects to go beyond these set limits for over-heating. With regards to natural light, COADY Architects advocate for all buildings to be targeted to achieve >2% average daylight factor.

#COADYCharter #SustainableDesign #Daylight #Overheating #EnergyEfficiency