As temperatures earlier this week reached upwards of
30ºC in Bideford and Exeter - with even higher temperatures elsewhere - the
importance of designing buildings for summer comfort, and to avoid overheating, becomes more apparent.
The highest UK temperature on Tuesday was recorded in Oxfordshire peaking at 33.5°C, and although this is by no means as hot as other parts of the world, the UK is not used to elevated temperatures and sustained bouts of heat. The high temperatures, unsurprisingly, resulted in widespread disruption of services, productivity, and sleep patterns.
The highest UK temperature on Tuesday was recorded in Oxfordshire peaking at 33.5°C, and although this is by no means as hot as other parts of the world, the UK is not used to elevated temperatures and sustained bouts of heat. The high temperatures, unsurprisingly, resulted in widespread disruption of services, productivity, and sleep patterns.
As
the UK typically experiences mild winters and summers, our built
environment and its residents have little resilience to cope with, and adapt to, any extremes in temperature. The recent heatwave only lasted a couple of
days, however the trend over the past ten years has shown that heat waves
are becoming a regular occurrence in the UK. The trends suggest more
prolonged heatwaves are likely to occur in the future.
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Summer temperature change to 2080
against a medium C02 emission scenario
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Yesterday's Guardian reported that June was the hottest
recorded since 1880, and that:
"as the string of record-breaking global temperatures continues unabated, June 2016 marks the 14th consecutive month of record-breaking heat"
This report adds to the growing evidence of rising global
temperatures and climate change currently occurring.
At Gale & Snowden, we are also seeing an increased trend of consultancy and troubleshooting projects assessing overheating and comfort issues both in the home and in the workplace. These are not old properties, instead more modern buildings
- the more we insulate buildings, the more we have to ensure the design is
correct in terms of orientation, glazing ratios, construction mass and
ventilation strategies.
Whilst it’s a great idea to harvest solar gain in winter; designs have to be mindful of summer solar gain also.
Another area where designs fall down is that the weather files used are typically based on past weather data, rather than likely future weather patterns. G&S design using future weather files as developed by Exeter University's Prometheus project.
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| Global Mean Temperatures |
Here a number of future weather
scenarios have been generated each based on a range of different carbon emission
scenarios. Depending on the project, whether it be commercial or domestic, we will assess the risk to the user group
(i.e. vulnerable elderly) or commercial risk to the building operation, and then
decide on the most appropriate future weather files to use. By doing so G&S can design in adaptability and
resilience at the outset to the effects of overheating.
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| Care Home Design for climate change and resilience to overheating |
Gale & Snowden Architects offer two services that address the issue of climate change and overheating in the built environment. Firstly, a climate change adaptation design consultancy service is offered where projects are analysed using future weather files, thermal modelling and carrying out climate change risk assessments. This can address issues such as overheating, flooding, wind-driven rain, and water shortage. The second service is a troubleshooting and fine-tuning service where buildings are assessed and tested using a wide range of instruments and tools, for example to test for overheating or poorly performing building services plant and controls. See below for further details:
If you are experiencing overheating in any of your buildings and finding they are struggling to perform as intended then please contact us and we will do our best to help.
