Less is More
6 Ways to improve your homes performance in the design.
One of the biggest misconceptions in our design and construction industry is the notion that better performance means more. More complication, more money and more systems. That simply is a big fat myth. Building performance is intentional, driven by the design (the cheapest place to get it right) and often about making things simpler, not more complicated.
If you are in the process of imagining or creating your new home, these this blog is for you. Here are the 6 ways to improve you homes performance in the design.
Simple Forms
The problem with complex designs is that they often have lots of junctions and many planes. Whilst this can (and not always) can lend itself to interesting Architecture, it’s by no means that only way to create great style. Remember the famous quote by Mies Van Der Rohe, “Less is more,” It applies to more than just aesthetics.
Simple (but no boring) forms are naturally better preforming. What you want to get right is the surface to volume ratio. Simply put this is the volume of the interior of your home, relative to the wall, floor and roof area where heat transfer can take place. The less surface area you have, the easier it is to moderate the interior environment of your independently from the exterior climatic conditions.
Considering Materiality
Materiality matters. So often materials are chosen because of cost. But here is why you should consider materials. In particular I will reference windows, as that is a very prominent area currently. We all know why our pots and pans are made of metal rather than wood or plastic. Firstly, we don’t want our pots and pans to burn, so we need a material that can transfer heat well and not store it and ultimate disintegrate. Metal was a game changer for cooking food. Aluminum is a common window material. We now have to thermally break it (as a minimum requirement) and put higher preforming glass into the units. The reason is that Aluminons is good at conducting heat. The very quality of this material doesn’t change because it’s used in a different application.
With uPVC coming in cost competitive with Aluminum the true cost of materiality is starting to become evident.
Intentional Airtightness
I often say that our Minimum standard Code Compliant homes are accidentally airtight. You might argue that this isn’t an issue as new homes are a far cry from the leaky old villa. However, homes that don’t have airtightness considered have a problem that the leak old villa never had to worry about.
As our homes don’t “breathe “as much as they use to, and thank goodness, they aren’t as cold and draught, moisture getting trapped into our wall, floor and ceiling elements is becoming more of an issue.
Trapped moisture in these elements lead to mould and rot issues, which over a period, hiding in places you cannot see, will ultimately cause massive health and structural issues.
Airtightness not only improves the heating capacity of your heaters and improves the efficiency of your ventilation systems, but it also protects your most value investment from unforeseen damage and decay down the line. It’s one of the best insulation policies you can invest in. And the only place to get airtightness right is in the design.
MHRV
MHRV stands for Mechanical Heat Recovery Ventilation. Now this is not to be confused with a standard HRV system many that are readily available on the market. This system does a number of things. Firstly, it does NOT take air from your ceiling. This system uses fresh OUTSIDE air and exhausts internal air OUTSIDE the building to avoid those moisture issues we touched on earlier.
This system constantly delivers fresh air evenly through your home, removing old stale carbon dioxide and moisture loaded air and distributing it well outside your buildings structure.
It has a system that allows heat already in your home to be recycled back into your home if desired. This reduces your heating requirements on the colder nights and days. It also removes moisture from your home. So rather than installing multiple heat pumps and running a dehumidifier, you get a system that reduces the need for one and eliminates the need for the other. When we start viewing a MHRV unit as an installation of appliances not included in build budgets, it brings the cost of this appliance in the build into perspective.
Designing out weak thermal spots.
The challenge we have in our convention new build construction is that we create lots of week thermal spots. These work for heat gains and heat losses depending on the season and the internal comfort requirements. The only place where these week spots can be addresses is in the design stage. Once build, it’s too late.
Our frame and truss industry doesn’t understand this. Often pre-nailed frames are delivered to site with far more timber than required. A sneaky suggestion is that more timber in the frames means a higher price. With shop drawings and reducing thermal bridges not a part of their processes, being intentional with the framing suppliers and systems for your new build currently is the only way to plug these leaks before they can be created.
Systems like SIPS, understand this and their systems reduce these weak spots by design.
Investing in External Shading
We focus so much heat loss, as does our building code. But more and more homeowners are coming to deal with hot homes. Our windows are the weakest link in our thermal envelope; however, they are not only areas where we lose heat, we can also gain heat. Useful gains can work well in the cooler times, but if the size, configuration, orientation and shading of these windows is not carefully considered in the design phase, the result will be costly air conditioners and heaters to remedy a problem cheaply and easily prevented in the design stage.
Thinking you home is good because its code compliant is the same as saying you are a good driver because you drive to the speed limit. Legally you have to comply with the speed limit, just as legally all buildings need to be code compliant. Stop and ask yourself what makes your home good. There are 2 systems that show that a home is good, Homestar and Passive House. Download the free guide to see how Smart Living Spaces uses Passive House and Home start to create good Homes.