which wall shall i use?
There are many new products being developed to satisfy the market for sustainable, cost efficient, low energy building systems. It can be a challenge to identify the system most suitable for a particular project.
Based on your schematic design, we can model a variety of potential building systems and make a comparative analysis of their performance in terms of cost, thermal rating and sustainability, depending on your particular objectives.
We have carried a out a comparative analysis of various systems, using a house we had designed for one of our clients.
The wall systems modelled were:
Timber Framed
Brick Veneer
Reverse Brick Veneer (Hebel)
Reverse Brick Veneer (Pine Cladding)
This particular analysis shows that timber clad reverse brick veneer was the best option. For a 5.3% increase in construction cost, a 10% decrease in annual energy cost resulted. The embodied energy was a bit higher than desired, but could be reduced by using recycled bricks.
NOTES:
- A timber framed building system has been used as a reference model for this analysis
- All costings have been done using Rawlinsons Construction Handbook Edition 31
- AccuRate has been used for thermal modeling
- eTool has been used to calculate embodied energy