Substantial Building Design

Sustainable building design is an integrated holistic approach with designing buildings that use substantially less energy by reducing consumption of non-renewable resources, greenhouse gas emissions, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments thereby improving building performance all phases of a building's life-cycle, including design, construction, operation decommissioning. This should be achieved through the sustainable design of buildings including their location, grouping, orientation and layout, making use of passive solar heating and natural daylight and ventilation.

The main objective of creating Substantial Building Design is to provide net zero energy buildings & carbon-neutral buildings. Carbon neutral buildings use no energy from external power grids and reduce carbon emissions to help mitigate climate change; reduce dependence on oil power, fuel imports, and the use of fossil fuels in general; and promote environmental sustainability leading to enhance natural resources and prevent environmental pollution to bring about a continual improvement in its environmental performance."

Good environmental practice is the complement to good economic practice. Measures to reduce the consumption of energy and water will result in substantial financial cost savings over the lifetime of the building. Cost savings that might seem marginal at today's prices could well increase considerably as these price rises come into effect throughout the life of the building.

Financial assessments of any project will be depend on the building's Whole Life Costs, including its design, construction, running and eventual deconstruction.

Design teams should make the integrated passive design in a way which ensures that design features are built into the design of new buildings from the earliest stages of the design process to maximize the possibilities for reducing environmental impact and running costs of the building over its lifetime. They should be able to demonstrate a proven track record in the successful design and construction of buildings using integrated passive design principles.

• The sizing, positioning and detailing windows should be made in order to get the most benefit from the sun while avoiding overheating in summer and heat loss in winter.
• Generating sufficiently exposed thermal mass to store heat from the sun in the winter and act as a heat sink for cooling in the summer. The benefits of thermal mass are often lost through excessive wall, ceiling and floor coverings
• Maintaining high levels of insulation in order to minimize unwanted heat loss or heat gains through the roof, walls, doors, windows and floors. building fabric should be constructed assuring no reasonable avoidable thermal bridges present in the insulation layers cause by gaps within the various elements, at the joints between elements and at the edges of elements
• Designing clear and robustly controlled air flows through buildings for daytime and night time cooling. Building air-tightness forms a critical component for achieving effective natural ventilation
• In order to provide confidence in the construction process there should be an appropriate system of site inspection with the building.
• After the completion of the building air permeability and pressure testing; and commissioning of the building services systems should be done.
• Achieving good air tightness performance is also a good indicator of good construction practice.
• Design teams should demonstrate clearly how the building will cope in so far as it is practicable with the effects of climate change.
• The design of drainage systems and below-ground works should take into account the possibility of increased maximum run-off rates, increased risk of flooding and rising groundwater levels
• Locally sourced and/or reclaimed material should be used wherever possible.
• Major building elements (i.e. upper floor slab, external walls, roof and windows) should achieve an overall 'A' rating. In the choice of materials consideration should be given to the embodied energy of any given material
• Insolents should not contain, or require during manufacture, ozone-depleting substances.
• Paints and other wall coverings should be low or free of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
• Substances containing CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and HCFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) should be avoided.
• All laboratory wastewater systems should be segregated from domestic wastewater systems. External drainage systems should be based on Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems requirements to help manage run-off that might otherwise cause flooding and also help to preserve water resources.
• Contractors should develop a construction waste minimization plan. Key waste streams should be identified at the start of the project and measures implemented to reduce these wastes.
• On completion, new buildings should be subject to POE (Post Occupancy Evaluation).