Dulce’Celeste Martinez - Module 8 - Part 1

Intended users

This tool is intended for designers, engineering consultants, and energy analysts.

Need you’re trying to provide a solution or support for

This tool will support energy efficiency designs focused on the use of natural ventilation, a passive house design. After doing some research, I learned that the use of natural ventilation over mechanical processes can save between 10-30% of a buildings total energy consumption. As sustainable energy efficient buildings are becoming more prominent, I will be creating a generative design tool that evaluates a building’s natural ventilation against construction costs. An important design consideration is also the cost of building construction, so this tool will account for construction cost per square foot and by number of levels.

Sources:

• https://www.priceindustries.com/content/uploads/assets/literature/engineering-guides/natural-ventilation-engineering-guide.pdf
• https://www.wbdg.org/resources/natural-ventilation
• https://www.ashrae.org/file library/technical resources/standards and guidelines/standards addenda/62_1_2013_p_20150707.pdf

Inputs

Constants:

• Building Elements (Width, Length, Height, # of Surfaces, and Level Height)
• Number of People
• 150-250 SF/person (office)
• Constants (CFM/person)
• 5 CFM/person
• Cost of construction (Will combine)
• Generally construction cost increases as height increases
• https://buildingtheskyline.org/skyscraper-height-iv/#:~:text=It's generally believed that average,an additional floor becomes greater.
• $250/SF
• https://homeguide.com/costs/commercial-construction-cost-per-square-foot#:~:text=Commercial construction costs %24240 to,the East or West coast.

Variable

• Window spacing
• Window Size

Underlying logic of the model you’ll implement

I will use similar logic as shown in the window spacing for natural ventilation example from module 7. However, instead of circles on a single one-story surface I will attempt to place squares/rectangles (more realistic) on all surfaces except the ground and top profiles. In order for this to run I expect I will have to place some constraints on window and spacing type. For the building form, I will test the most typical form which is a 4-side polygon (but can be adjusted). After accommodating inputs, I will create evaluations for window area and floor area to determine if the building has minimum ventilation and total construction cost.

Outputs

• Window Area
• Floor Area
• Total Construction Cost
• Ratio of floor area to natural ventilation. (The openable area for natural ventilation is typically at least 4–5% of the floor area being ventilated.)