Methodology for the Evaluation of Natural Ventilation in ... - Cham

Chapter 3.0Evaluation of Prototype Building: Houghton Hall3.1 IntroductionUsing previous methods employed in monitoring and evaluating mechanically ventilatedbuildings as a baseline, adaptations were made to account for the challenges that arise innaturally ventilated buildings. The overall configuration and typical internal loads of thebuilding were similar to a standard commercial office building and the energy consumption wasreadily measured, so the focus of the evaluation was shifted to temperature and airflow concerns.This chapter outlines the building design characteristics and method used to assess the prototypebuilding in order to understand better the unique aspects of the naturally ventilated building andthe resulting monitoring procedure.3.2 Prototype Building: Houghton HallHoughton Hall, the naturally ventilated commercial office building assessed as the prototypebuilding for developing and validating the model methodology, was located in Luton. Thislocation is a temperate area of the United Kingdom that does not have a significant number ofheating and cooling degree-days. Luton typically has 1902 heating degree-days (HDD), base15.5ºC and 389 cooling degree-days (CDD) base 15.5ºC.The three-story building is located in an office park with buildings of similar height, just outsideof the city of Luton, 60 km north-northwest of central London. The buildings in the office parkare well spaced, with approximately 20-30 meters between buildings. To the north of HoughtonHall is an open public access park. The surrounding office buildings located within the sameoffice park are all mechanically ventilated and cooled. The building is owner-occupied by ahousing assistance organization that made the decision to consolidate their operations into acentral location and required that the building be low energy and best value-‗Egan Compliance‘(Egan, 1998), even if it was not the lowest in initial cost.The prototype building is three stories in height, 2,600 square meters, with open plan officespace on all three levels: south side of the first floor, both south and north sides of the secondfloor, and the north side of the third floor. A typical building floor plan and section through thecentral atrium are presented in Figure 11. The north side of the first floor is used as a largemeeting room that is closed off from the rest of the building, and has the ability to bemechanically cooled due to the high internal heat gains for short periods of time that is used on aweekly basis. The south side of the third floor is closed off from the rest of the building andhouses the mechanical room, printing room and file room. The occupied office spaces arecompletely open onto the central atrium that runs the length of the building along the east-westaxis. The atrium extends a floor height above the third floor and is comprised of glass panels onboth the east and west facades and along the roof, and houses five fan-powered ventilationstacks. Images from the exterior and interior of the building are presented in Figure 12 through14. Figure 13 provides a detailed view of the atrium stack vent and fan.43