Here’s how you can optimize
space without making it cramped and ensure ample natural light and ventilation
at the same time.
The use of natural ventilation
is definitely an advantage with the raising concerns regarding the cost and
environmental impact of energy use. Not only does natural ventilation provide
ventilation (outdoor air) to ensure safe healthy and comfortable conditions for
building occupants without the use of fans, it also provides free cooling
without the use of mechanical systems.
When carefully designed,
natural ventilation can reduce building construction costs and operation costs
and reduce the energy consumption for air-conditioning and circulating fans. An
additional bonus is that no longer will any noisy fan be of your concern.
Design considerations
There are basically two types
of natural ventilation that can be employed in a building: wind driven
ventilation and stack ventilation. Both of which are caused by naturally
occurring pressure differences that causes wind driven ventilation uses the
natural forces of the wind where as stack ventilation is caused by pressures
generated by buoyancy as a result in the differences in temperature and
humidity. Hence, there are different strategies in the optimization of the two
types of natural ventilation.
Design strategies
The design for natural
ventilation should incorporate maximizing both the wind and stack driven
ventilation design concepts as mentioned above.
General design considerations include :
- Increase air supply intake by ensuring no outside obstructions (such as vegetation or site objects) nor inside obstruction (such as furniture and interior partition) obstruct inlet openings.
- Rooms should have inlet and outlet openings located in opposing pressure zones.
- All occupied spaces should have an inlet and outlet opening in which at least a minimum of one opening should be an operable window to control flow.
- Inlets should supply air at a location low in the room. Outlets should be located across the room and at a higher level.
- The long façade of the building and the majority of the openings should be directed so that the windward wall is perpendicular to the summer wind.
- Use skylights or ridge vents. They are very desirable for night time thermal comfort in houses to vent heated / warm air that rises, and allow heat to be radiated into the cold. It can also be a good outlet for wind driven ventilation.
- Window areas should not be excessive and be protected by exterior shading devices.
- Reduce the possibility of wall warming by the sun through use of light-coloured building exteriors, trees/shrub to provide shading and evaporative cooling, grass and other groundcover to keep ground temperatures low and ponds and fountains to enhance evaporative cooling.
- Many of the considerations taken above is to either increase the air flow or lower the heat gain so that the natural ventilation can effective cool the spaces at home.
- Mechanical cooling and ventilation systems will be used to supplement the natural ventilation. By lowering the heat gains, the less air flow will be required to remove the heat, thus there will be less a need of a mechanical cooling system.
For natural light
Add a large mirror :
Mirrors are an easy and budget
friendly solution to increase natural light in a room. If one of your walls has
windows but the others don’t, hang a large mirror on the wall facing your
windows. They will double the amount of light in the room.
Replace solid doors :
If you don’t want to do
anything as drastic as inserting glass panels into walls or ceilings, replacing
solid doors with those glazed panels will also help bring light into dark
rooms, such as interior hallways or bathrooms.
Remove obstacles :
