Your Buildings Energy Efficiency

What is building effeciency? we hear of energy effecient windows, air conditions, appliances, but what does it mean for a building to be effecient? Before we get into the equipment, lets first define the reason for having an effecient home and office. The places where we spend the majority of our time is either our home, or our office, and together it is estimated that we spend up to 90% indoors between these two spaces. As noted in the previous section,  with the amount of time we spend indoors, the quality of air we breathe in these spaces has a direct effect on our health and well being.

Next is the effeciency. How much energy does it take for that building to keep us comfortable? Thermally, physically, economically, physcologically, comfortable. We seldom think about all the factors that are involved in our comfort. However, If a room is too small to meet its function, we feel "jam-up", too cold or hot to focus and do work, we become distracted, if it allows too much light inside, we try to switch our location or close the binds if available, to circumvent glare. Too stuffy, we become congested and need some "fresh air"- removing ourselves from the space completely. If it allows to much noise into the space, again we canot focus. If there have been alot of cleanings chemicals or high VOC paints used in the space, which are referred to as low emitting chemicals/pollutants, we may experience headaches. All of these things we rarley consider contribute to our overall comfort level.

More times than not, the light bill is largely impacted because the building has not been designed with these factors taken into full account regarding orientation, wind cycles, shading, heat island effects, and insulation to name a few. The design of a building should be a holistic approach taking into acccount all of the building systems and how they will react together to create comfort. Unfortunaltey what ends up happening is a building is put together with very little consideration of these factors, and then we have a space which has to be mechanically cooled. Heating and cooling loads are tabulated, and we are told we need a large costly system to keep this space comfortable. The building is often designed to rely soley on this system for continual air exchange, which over time deteriorates and eventually it begins to feel "stuffy" and there is insuffecient passive systems to compensate for it. The bad thing is, the more time you spend in such a space, the less you become aware of it and you are continually exposed to it, which again relates to indoor air quality (IAQ) and your health - its all one building system.

One of the key components of designing and building green is to incoporate active (mechanical) and passive (natural) systems that allows the building to sustain a comfort level that requires the minimum amount of energy. Which will be directly reflected in your electricity, water and other utility bills. The goal is to use natures resources, sun, wind and rain being the most common to harvest free energy, reduce demand, recover wasted energy and increase effeciency, while protecting the natural habitat and maximizing open space.

It has been researched and concluded that offices which are designed with all of these factors taken into account are more productive than conventional built offices, because persons are more focused, less distracted and generally work in a healthier work environment, thus producing more work in the same amount of time. Thay are more effecient!

It is the goal of Caribbean greensafe to design and create a comfortable and effecient structure with emphasis on IAQ for its clientele, for new or existing structures regardless of its size or cost. 

If you are interested in improving the efficiency of your home or office, please visit the energy efficient tips for more information about do it yourself simple energy audits. For more complex and technical analysis, we will soon offer advanced energy audits which will determine the condition of the thermal boundaries, indoor air Quality and overall efficiency of the strcuture.