CARBON SAVING

As you ask me for, I will try to put some figures about Carbon Savings related to A+HOUSE. You ask me to use as baseline a new building as Part L home in the UK. The fact is that I have studied this regulation deeply, and I can not present rigorous results to you, since I would need to define the project in detail, use UK climate variables, use SAP2009 software and obtain previous figures from a similar house.

What I have done is to calculate CO2 emmision of one possible A+HOUSE typology located in Madrid, following the new law about Spanish Energy Performance Certification and Official Calculation Software “CEX”. Then I have made some comments and comparisons with Part L regulation. I have located de A+HOUSE in Madrid, because it is a place where temperature is really high in summer and very low in winter. Therefore we will see how effective the A+HOUSE is.

 This is the A+HOUSE typology that I have used to make calculation.

CO2 figures obtained, have into account all thermal transfer and hot water production that occurs in the house, as Part L regulation does, but house lightning. CO2 produced by A+HOUSE lightning has been calculated aside.

 As you can see in the Official Label obtained after applying the software, CO2 emmision is (kgCO₂/m² year), what means that it is quite below A qualification figures.

Some data that you could find interesting are:

                                   Global U value Part L regulation.

- Roof                         0,19 W/m²K                0,20 W/m²K

- Walls                        0,16 W/m²K                0,30 W/m²K

- Floor                         0,20 W/m²K                0,25 W/m²K

- Party walls                0,15 W/m²K                0,20 W/m²K

- Windows                  1,50 W/m²K                2,00 W/m²K

- Air permeability < 5 m³/hm² (50Pa)

Standard facilities.

- High efficiency (air to air) water heater. Performance 340%

- High efficiency heating and cooling system. Performance 420%

- Solar (thermal) contribution. 70% hot water and heating demand.

CO₂ produced by lightning

In A+HOUSE, only LED lights will be used. In our example the house includes 20 LED lamps, that means an average of 0,01825 CO₂ Tons/year per lamp that result in 0,365 CO₂ tons/year in the house. House surface is 101m2, what means a total of 3,61 CO₂ kg/year m².

Then, global CO2 emmisions are 7,48 CO₂ kg/year m²

The equipment chosen for this example are standard ones, and from this baseline, figures shown can be improve. For example adding:

- Photovoltaic panel in order to get the electricity consumed in the house.

- Solar (thermal) contribution, to improve cooling performance in summer.

- Blinds or other solar control measures to be used in summer to low cooling demand.

Now that we know energy performance of a single A+HOUSE, let me talk about how ideas and inventions that I have already included in this competition would help to even improve this performance. We have to be aware that some energy aspects are not taking into account when calculating CO₂ emmision (DER and TER in Part L), such as electricity used by appliances in the house, or standby mode consumption, but obviously, as they consume electricity they produce CO₂. This is why I have included some inventions that help to reduced electricity consumption.

- “You´ve been green today”, the device that monitor every energy consumption in the house, will alert the owners when it´s being using more energy than needed. (Part L regulation states that, owners should be trained about how to use the house and its facilities in order to get the best performance possible and the lowest energy consumption)

- “Standby off”, the sockets that will alert when any appliance is consuming in standby mode. (Even not being included in DER and TER calculation, it will help to reduce energy consuption)

- “Lightwall”, will clearly help to reduce CO2 produced in the house by the reduction of artificial lightning needed.

- “Smartdrain” and “Smarttap” are two devices that apart from saving water, will reduce the amount of energy needed to heat the water that is to be used in the house.

- “Algae lamp”, or other CO2 eater appliances, will contribute to reduce the global CO2 emmision of the house.

- “Saving foot”, will save tons of water, cold and hot, what means less heating energy needed.

- “Smartwindows”, when completely develop, will contribute to adapt solar contribution and isolation level of the house windows, what will also reduce energy needed to cool or heat the house.

All this devices and others that already can be introduced, some of them already seen in this competition, is what turns a High Energy Efficient house in a new concept called A+HOUSE.