Precedent Study: The Environmental Building
The Building Research Establishment (BRE) office building in Garston, Watford, United Kingdom, incorporates solar assisted passive ventilation stacks as part of its ventilation strategy.
Designed by architects Feilden Clegg Bradley, the BRE offices aim to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 30% from current best practice guidelines and sustain comfortable environmental conditions without the use of air conditioning. The passive ventilation stacks, solar shading, and hollow concrete slabs with embedded under floor cooling are key features of this building. Ventilation and heating systems are controlled by the building management system (BMS) while a degree of user override is provided to adjust conditions to occupants' needs.
The building utilizes five vertical shafts as an integral part of the ventilation and cooling strategy. The main components of theses stacks are a south facing glass-block wall, thermal mass walls and stainless steel round exhausts rising a few meters above roof level. The chimneys are connected to the curved hollow concrete floor slabs which are cooled via night ventilation. Pipes embedded in the floor can provide additional cooling utilizing groundwater.
On warm windy days air is drawn in through passages in the curved hollow concrete floor slabs. Stack ventilation naturally rising out through the stainless steel chimneys enhances the air flow through the building. The movement of air across the chimney tops enhances the stack effect. During warm, still days, the building relies mostly on the stack effect while air is taken from the shady north side of the building. Low-energy fans in the tops of the stacks can also be used to improve airflow.
Overnight, control systems enable ventilation paths through the hollow concrete slab removing the heat stored during the day and storing coolth for the following day. The exposed curved ceiling gives more surface area than a flat ceiling would, acting as a cool ‘radiator’, again providing summer cooling. Research based on actual performance measurements of the passive stacks found that they enhanced the cooling ventilation of the space during warm and still days and may also have the potential to assist night-time cooling due to their thermally massive structure.
Read more about this topic: Solar Chimney
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