Smithgall Student Service Building Energy Performance Evaluation and Retrofit Department
Assigned Area
Auxiliary Services, AVP
1,653
Center For The Arts, R. Ferst
N
Room/Space Count 9
847
5
Counseling Center
5,084
40
Dean of Students
7,227
38
Housing Office
3,226
16
Leadership Education & Development Program Non-Assignable Parents Program Student Affairs, VP
209
1
9,840
42
732
5
7,182
15
Student Government Assoc.
429
3
Unassigned
460
3
VPSA - Assessment
131
1
1,762
10
VPSS-Student Publications Vending
65
TOTALS
38,847 Total Gross Floor Area
Energy evaluation methods The climate in Atlanta is 3a, which is humid and hot in the summer and humid and mild in winter, It makes the natural ventilation difficult during summer when the air contains high humidity. Based on the wind rose diagram, the monthly dominant wind direction mostly from North West direction and it is stronger and last longer during January to May and from October to December. It creates possible opportunities for natural ventilation during these seasons. Since the temperature and humidity fluctuates daily, an automated natural flush out plan can be embodied in the boiling to comply with indoor thermal comfort and maximize the efficiency of energy usage. Currently, there are some operable windows on west and east facade of the building, but it possibly doesn’t work as effectively since the users don’t operate these windows based on the temperature or humidity pattern, especially most of operable time is after office hours. Also, the building is quite bulky, and the whole façade is occupied by offices. During after hour time when doors of each office are closed, the natural air flush out become fairly difficult. Based on the Ecotect Analysis, the shading reduction factor is shown as follows. 1 represents no shading at all, and 0 represents fully shaded. Here is a group of simulation smaples of west facade. All the scale is from 1(blue)-100.
1 189
West
Sep.
Floor two
Feb.
May
Oct.
Dec.
42,598
Floor one
south
east
north
west
Jan.
0.81
Feb.
0.85
0.42
0.1
0.62
0.41
0.15
Mar.
0.69
0.89
0.51
0.2
0.7
Apr.
0.9
0.51
0.3
0.76
May
0.9
0.61
0.5
0.82
Smithgall student service building is located in the west east portion of Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta campus. It was built in 1990 by architect Johnson Smith Reagan with a steel and concrete structure. As an administrative building on campus, it provides 42,598 sq ft (3957 sq m) gross floor area, which includes 38,847 sq ft (3609 sq m) assigned office spaces for 14 departments and a three story tall open space for group gathering or lobby. In a regular situation, the assigned space could accommodate for 189 people to work and study (Spacemanagement). Sitting at the South-west portion of the campus, Smithgall building is in a relatively dense context and surrounded by student center parking lots, open lot visitor parking, Wenn student center, and Crest Art Center.
Jun.
1
0.67
0.5
0.85
Jul.
1
0.68
0.5
1
Aug.
1
0.68
0.35
1
Sep.
0.9
0.64
0.15
0.9
Oct.
0.88
0.64
0.1
0.7
Nov.
0.88
0.35
0.08
0.65
As an office building serves every student, the Smithgall building has a nice Architectural gesture with a three-story tall “greenhouse” space at North-east corner, which responds well to the glass-box dinning space in student center. Structurally, it is independent from the whole building with its own concrete frame, which creates a contrast with the red bricks wall finish of rest of the building. Within this space, the architect tried to simulate a conditioned outdoor space by creating extra height with a massive pitched roof, installing the same outdoor lighting fixtures and pavement. As it moves toward the South-west direction, the building is closed up as regular two story buildings with traditional offices. When users enter the building, they could have a smooth spatial transition. Outside of this glass space, it is surrounded by plenty of trees to create a sense of being embraced by in nature, which also acts as shading and alleviate the solar radiative heat gain through huge area of the curtain walls.
Dec.
0.86
0.34
0.08
0.63
To create a sense of outdoor in the glass box space, the building faces a serious challenge in shading on East side and heat loss/gain throughout the massive glass surface. Although the space is surrounded by dense cluster of trees, the sufficiency of shading still need further proof. On South direction, there are no shading devices, and the windows are almost flushed with exterior finishes of the wall assembly, which have no shading effect to the glazing. Even worse, adjacent to a ground parking lot, there is no other sun light sun obstructions, which could potentially cause serious glare in the south office space. Although the west façade is usually in the worst situation, the extruded parking garage is only 6-8 feet away from the Smithgall building at the south west portion; it alleviates the glare issues on the west façade. The downside of it is the parking structure basically kills the view from the west side office. Also, the tree density along west side is very high and creates a lot of shading to this side. In the morning, most rooms need to open lights to satisfy certain lighting level. The east façade faces the student center with plenty of trees around this side. The 25 feet walk path means the two buildings has no shading effect to each other since both buildings are about 9 meters tall. Probably, new shading devices need to be introduces to avoid glare in the morning. Overall, due to a low height of the windows on the first floor, 90% of the windows are covered by the internal drips to private privacy. At the same time, people turn on the light throughout the whole day, which is a huge water of natural light and increase the energy consumption in terms of brighten the spaces.
The latest time of renovation on Smithgall building is in 2010, and the facility management replaced the HVAC system with variable air volume system and re-wire the lighting system. Besides it, the building maintains the original construction since 1990. Here are major factors of original input that influencing the energy consumption. 1. Building automation system 5. Occupancy activity 3. Building envelope information 2. COP of HVAC 4. Applicance and lighting To measure the energy consumption threshold, the EPC (energy performance coefficient) calculator developed by Georgia Institute of Technology is applied. The ECP calculator contain four major EUI, heating& cooling need, delivered energy, primary energy and CO2 emission. The tool also set a baseline as reference for these four EUI values to evaluate the energy performance of the buildings. The ratio of building EUI to reference EUI is called EPC. The calculation of EPC is built upon Excel and linked to specific climate data. The major adjustable parameters are listed above, and each category has multiple sub-categories. It provides quick but accurate results when evaluating a building energy performance. Based on the monthly shading reduction factor and all the key factor input, we could calculation the current primary energy consumption of the building as 550.52 kwh/m2/ yr. As for the delivered energy of the building, it consumes 234.9 kwh/m2/ yr, which include 89 kwh/m2/ yr natural gas and 145.9 kwh/m2/ yr of electricity. EPC1 EPC2 ECP3 ECP4
Jan 17.840 49.520 73.670 14444.000
Feb 10.510 30.690 49.140 11672.000
Mar 3.770 13.080 29.750 6760.000
Apr 2.760 7.980 25.510 5617.000
May 7.520 11.780 35.980 8764.000
Jun 12.940 16.120 54.710 11993.000
Jul 15.230 18.860 61.280 13433.000
Aug 16.310 17.830 60.500 13263.000
Sep 7.900 11.930 46.100 8872.000
Oct 2.360 8.910 25.080 5582.000
Nov 5.110 17.300 33.410 6298.000
Dec 11.990 30.910 55.390 13172.000
TOTAL Total/ref. 114.240 1.503 234.910 1.894 550.520 2.284 119870.000 2.211
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