New UK Building Regulations go live
By this time tomorrow, the 2006 update to the building regulations will come in to effect in the UK. For the building services industry, the main impact of the changes will be to the way in which the HVAC and Lighting systems are designed and configured to meet the requirements of the new Part L (Conservation of fuel and power) and Part F (Ventilation).
For non-residential buildings, demonstrating compliance to the new Part L for regulatory approval will now require the use of the BRE developed SBEM - Simplified Building Energy Model - calculation tool which supports the National Calculation Method adopted for the UK in support of the EU Energy Performance in Buildings Directive. The BRE tool is provided as a free download from their website, and comes with a basic user interface - iSBEM.
The National Calculation Method also allows the calculation to be carried out by accredited simulation software, which must be tested against a new CIBSE accreditation methodology defined in TM 33, which is as yet unpublished. By the way, CIBSE have made available webcasts of the recent major conference on Part L and Part F, and they are well worth watching. See the CIBSE site for details, registration may be necessary.
For residential buildings, a new updated SAP procedure has been published.
What are the implications of these new regulations?
For architects and building services designers, the biggest impact will be the requirement to demonstrate compliance with Part L. The iSBEM tool is a Microsoft Access based package which allows you to define the building elements, zones and systems, and then runs the SBEM calculations on the project, producing a pass or fail verdict on the project. You must have Access installed to be able to run the tool, and from my initial review of it's usage, I can see that this is going to cost engineers a lot of time and effort to model their projects. Indeed, tests run by Faber Maunsell have shown that "...Significant input is required", it is "...time consuming" and it can take up to 8 days to model a relatively simple building!
What this means is that for all but the most simple of buildings, it is going to be much more practical and cost effective to use an accredited simulation tool, as the cost of using iSBEM will be a minimum of £2000 per project in manhour costs alone, based on Faber Maunsell's estimates.
The IAI in the UK are currently looking at the feasibility of developing a tool to interface with SBEM directly, using an IFC model. More on this interesting development shortly!
For non-residential buildings, demonstrating compliance to the new Part L for regulatory approval will now require the use of the BRE developed SBEM - Simplified Building Energy Model - calculation tool which supports the National Calculation Method adopted for the UK in support of the EU Energy Performance in Buildings Directive. The BRE tool is provided as a free download from their website, and comes with a basic user interface - iSBEM.
The National Calculation Method also allows the calculation to be carried out by accredited simulation software, which must be tested against a new CIBSE accreditation methodology defined in TM 33, which is as yet unpublished. By the way, CIBSE have made available webcasts of the recent major conference on Part L and Part F, and they are well worth watching. See the CIBSE site for details, registration may be necessary.
For residential buildings, a new updated SAP procedure has been published.
What are the implications of these new regulations?
For architects and building services designers, the biggest impact will be the requirement to demonstrate compliance with Part L. The iSBEM tool is a Microsoft Access based package which allows you to define the building elements, zones and systems, and then runs the SBEM calculations on the project, producing a pass or fail verdict on the project. You must have Access installed to be able to run the tool, and from my initial review of it's usage, I can see that this is going to cost engineers a lot of time and effort to model their projects. Indeed, tests run by Faber Maunsell have shown that "...Significant input is required", it is "...time consuming" and it can take up to 8 days to model a relatively simple building!
(Click to view full picture)
What this means is that for all but the most simple of buildings, it is going to be much more practical and cost effective to use an accredited simulation tool, as the cost of using iSBEM will be a minimum of £2000 per project in manhour costs alone, based on Faber Maunsell's estimates.
The IAI in the UK are currently looking at the feasibility of developing a tool to interface with SBEM directly, using an IFC model. More on this interesting development shortly!
posted by Brendan McFarlane at 10:26 AM
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