Page 36 - Climate Control News Oct 2021

Insulation & Ducting
The small 15m x 14m block provided a design challenge for architect, Ben Caine.
The home is quite unusual in Perth where dou- ble brick construction dominates new home construction.
‘Timber framing was the obvious solution. It provides the best balance of sustainability, speed, and thermal performance,” Caine said.
In order to achieve fundamental solar passive performance the house was positioned on the south boundary to allow winter sun access to the interior for warmth.
“We developed a timber construction meth- odology that can achieve the Passive House standard of performance and airtightness for lit- tle more than the cost
of a typical home,” Caine said.
perPformance
Best in thermal
“Designing a more compact building form also achieves some cost savings, which al- low more of the budget to be allocated to the high performance glazing and ventilation system.”
Whilst the home is
timber framed, a vene-
tian plaster brick wall
fronts the laneway
and lends the home some solidity and pro- vides additional fortification from the public laneway adjacent.
THE GERMAN PASSIVE HOUSE STANDARD IS THE OBVIOUS CHOICE FOR ANY HOMEOWNER SEEKING A HOME THAT DELIVERS THE BEST IN THERMAL PERFORMANCE.
ASSIVHAUS WORKS ON the ba- sisthatthehomeishighlyinsulated, airtight and efficiently ventilated.
Designed to act like a thermos, fresh filtered air is provided continu- ously to provide an optimum level of comfort with- out the need for additional heating or cooling and results in energy savings of around 90 per cent
compared with Building Code standard homes.
A prime example of this standard sits on a tiny block, just 213sqm on a rear laneway in the
coastal Perth suburb of Scarborough.
MAIN: Inside the coastal Perth home.
ABOVE: Architect, Ben Caine.
Smart wall with active insulation
THE EMPOWER WALL is a first-of-its-kind smart wall that combines advanced manufactur- ing, building innovations, and power electronics.
Since the wall arrived at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in March this year research- ers have been collecting data.
A team of staff from the Department of Ener- gy’s Building Technologies Office, Advanced Manufacturing Office, and ORNL, collaborated to develop the EMPOWER Wall, which functions as a cooling system that helps reduce energy use, decrease peak energy demand, lower energy bills, utilise renewable energy, and maintain oc- cupant comfort.
The wall’s functionality and design can be customised and adapted for installation in any building.
It measures five-by-eight feet, was 3D-printed at the Department of Energy's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL using a unique, infrastructure-scale, additive-manufacturing system called SkyBAAM.
SkyBAAM is low-cost, cable-driven, and field- deployable, and can be adapted for any construc- tion site. The EMPOWER Wall is connected to a chiller and contains thermal-storage and active- insulation systems.
Embedded pipes carry chilled water through the wall during low-demand hours, reducing its interior temperature.
The on-demand cooling capabili- ty of the active insulation reduces electricity costs by offsetting the use of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning or HVAC system.
The EMPOWER wall also uses a control method called "model pre- dictive control" to optimise the op- eration of the active insulation and thermal storage by predicting fu-
RIGHT: The wall’s functionality and design can be customised for any building.
ture conditions, such as variations in weather or the occupant’s behaviour.
Through additive manufacturing, ORNL can precisely control the deposition conditions, such as temperature, environmental carbon concen- trations, and humidity, to create structures which not only use less energy, but also sequester atmospheric carbon over time.
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