1 Professor and Endowed Chair of Infrastructure Research, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA, m.mcginley@louisville.edu
2 Former graduate students, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, 40292, USA, kamuld01@gmail.com and criggs@ameresco.com
ABSTRACT
The sustainable and energy efficient design of school buildings has been a significant focus of the design community in the past few years. This effort has culminated in a number of net zero school designs and a series of design guidelines. However, there has recently been concern voiced suggesting that some energy efficient school designs use much higher first cost building systems that may have higher maintenance costs and these systems are being questioned relative to their fire resistance and indoor environmental impact.
In response to these concerns an investigation was conducted with the goal of developing a list of low life cycle cost systems that can be used for energy efficient school designs in Kentucky (Climate Zone 4). Each of the systems was incorporated into a typical prototype middle school configuration and the effect each system has on the overall energy used over the life cycle of the building was determined using the eQuest analysis program, for five typical Kentucky climates. Conventional materials and construction practices were used where feasible and differential costs were developed for each system variation. These costs were used to determine simple payback periods for each system improvement.
This paper will describe results of this study, one of which suggests that increasing the thermal resistance (R) of walls much beyond the code minimum values did not significantly decrease the yearly energy use in typical school building and result in very high payback periods. Much higher decreases in energy use can be obtained with improvement in HVAC systems and controls, with lower payback periods. These results also appear to be consistent in other climate zones as well.
KEYWORDS: masonry walls, energy, efficiency, costs
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