Major Influence on Material Selections and Design - Essay Example

TOPIC: THE REQUIREMENT OF A COMMERCIAL BUILDING IS THAT IS "LOW MAINTENANCE". THIS REQUIREMENT COULD HAVE A MAJOR INFLUENCE ON MATERIAL SELECTIONS AND DESIGN. When a design or choice of buildings is made without the maintenance point of view, the result can be a facility that is expensive or difficult to maintain. As such, sustainable design should be applied in all phases of the life cycle of a building, including program building construction, building operation and finally demolition. Commercial building is a building with more than 50 percent of its floor space used for commercial activities. Commercial buildings include but are not limited to stores, offices, schools, Churches, libraries, museums, hospitals, clinic, ware houses, jails among others. The efficiency of a building is directly related to the integration of the numerous elements. The orientation of the building, the window/wall ratio and visible/thermal properties, the efficiency of the components of each element, the choice of materials and their ventilation requirements, and the balancing of the heating and cooling requirements of each element. Commercial buildings should consider the needs to address early in the process the integration of the building orientation and envelop components with the heating, cooling, ventilating and lighting requirements. The size, location and properties of the windows have a direct effect on the lighting requirements and heating and cooling loads of the building. According to (Cohen, 1994), the choice of certain windows can enhance the equality and quality of the lighting system while reducing the cooling and heating loads. The cost of low quality windows can increase the cost of the light system and the heating/cooling components such that these items will cost less or have less impact to the construction budget. Most often, the building design and construction process needs not to address and control the infiltration of the outside air. A complete understanding of all these elements and aspects of a building is important in building, including commercial builders. Influence of material selections The requirements as stated above have major influence on the materials and producers installed will determine the long-term energy and water usage and the long-term maintenance of a building. These are low materials that are not durable as regards wall and floor finishes, the fixtures, and the equipment. The products selected will affect the energy plug loads, the water consumption, and other goods and services. The environmental concerns include but are not limited to recycled contents, locally and regionally produced; renewable, local and state environmental goals and targets, and the ability to be reused or recycled are not mostly considered. Design for good air quality, efficient and effective lighting and comfortable temperatures should be of a great importance. CONSTRUCTUION ADMINISTRATION The construction phase is critical to the success of a performance building in order for the design intent to be realized it is necessary that the site be managed to reduce water win-off, to control dust migration, to control construction waste, and limit other environmental impacts which most commercial buildings lack. To control construction waste, construction materials need to be organized extract reusable items, recyclable items. Compact items and hazardous items depending on the experience of the contractors, firms new to high performance buildings will require education on all aspects of site management, waste collection, verification of installed items, collection of material data on all items, and their importance to the final quality of the building. In as much as commercial buildings are known for low maintenance, the occupant's condition of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment is very important (ISO, 1994). Thermal comfort therefore describes person's psychological state of mind about their thermal climate and is usually described simply in terms of whether they are feeling too hot or too cold. Terminal comfort can be difficult to define parametrically because the range of environmental and human factors needs to be considered in order to determine what will make people feel comfortable. These factors include: Air and operative temperature Humidity Maintenance culture Air velocity Personal control Occupant factors, such as clothing type and level of activity. In practice, a high level of thermal comfort is considered to occur when a high proportion e.g. 80% of building occupants are predicted to be satisfied with the condition of the building. A significant influence on these is whether a space is mechanically conditioned or naturally conditioned, these are known to require different physical conditions, since occupant expectations in the latter are shifted due to different thermal experiences and availability of individual control. Thermal comfort can be specified according to a statistical prediction of the proportion of building occupants who are comfortable, based on the parameters described above. ISO standard 7730, moderate thermal environments, means determination of the PMV and PPD indices and specification of the condition for thermal comforts (ISO 1994) specified three levels of acceptance for thermal comfort in mechanically conditioned environment, since, in practice, the level attained will depend on a range of factors: technical, cost, environmental, energy and performance. Acceptance of thermal comfort was expressed as the percent people dissatisfied (PPD) at level of Read More