Building Performance

Building performance is the single most important thing for ALL buildings.

With poor building envelope performance, comes higher energy consumption. Using more efficient plant to heat and cool a building is not tackling energy consumption from the source of the problem.

Air tightness also affects 3 out the 6 criteria of the ASHRAE performance measuring protocols.

Altogether for the Following important reasons:

Improve Indoor air quality
Comfort
Energy Efficiency
Boost Building longevity

To illustrate, Building Performance comes from achieving the following:

Construction air tightness
Insulation consistency (good build quality with No thermal bridging in the design)
Energy Recovery or Heat Recovery Ventilation (ERV & HRV)
Good HVAC design, coupled with effective connectivity to the building envelope with effective dampers located close to the building envelope.

Air tightness effects on a building

It is difficult to model building performance directly, but it is possible measure and observe the benefits of a high performaing building. Building Performance is next to impossible to understand or quantify with computer modelling, due to the following effects.

Stack Effect
- depending on the height of the building, Taller buildings can have worse performance penalties.
- how well connected are all the floors to each other.
- contingent on the climate the building is in,
- conditional on where the holes are (top and bottom), will dictate the amount of conditioned air a building may lose from chimney effect.
- in hot climates where it is cooler inside the building, reverse stack effect occurs.
Where the holes are located in the building envelope that contributes to stack effect. Wind/wind-tunnels can induce and aggravate significant air loss, and degrade insulation performance with a process known as wind washing.
HVAC Balance/imbalance which can be created in the course of satisfying occupants needs during the life of the building can also exacerbate stack effect and wind effect.

All three of these effects contribute unpredictably to the uncertainty of modelling building performance.

Efficiency Matrix has experience in some of the largest commercial buildings in Australia and abroad. We specialise in build quality, during design and construction, to ensure building performance issues are addressed, at the most cost-effective time.

We pride ourselves on getting results for our customers. Contact us for our capability statement. Visit other pages on our website which have quality content regarding building airtightness and insulation consistency.

Getting results

Important tasks for enabling good building performance:

Building airtightness testing, which is also known as Blower door testing.
Review of the building design.
Constant building inspection for air barrier continuity and insulation consistency.