Green Glazing Calculator GGC
Ambition:
- We are supporting manufacturers to consider development of GGC design and decision tool
- GGC’s emphasis is on carbon counting and will also address chemistry counting
- If funding is gained GGC core will be substantially developed within 3-6 months
- The greater task will be gathering datasets for many materials and products
- Once complete the same developments in GGC will be applied to GBC & GRC tools as soon as we can.
Proposal for GGC Green Glass Calculator Design & Decision tool
Based on parts of GBC Green Building Calculator with further developments
Green Building Calculator GBC suite of tools started life as 2 calculators to teach 5th year architecture students about:
Form-factor to help set targets, U value calculations, embodied energy and carbon and in-use energy and carbon calculations;
To analyse their studio designs (any building(s) type or shape).
GBC Development:
Covid gave an opportunity to merge these 2 calculators and add more functionality:
Bill of Quantities, Costs, pay back and carbon back periods, many elements of construction, one or many sized windows, etc.
GBC Competency:
In the absence of competent architectural education (only awareness has been required until Grenfell fire)
GBC is trying to be a design and decision tool to fill the education gap and tackle the performance gap
GBC includes links into advisory pages of GBE Green Building Encyclopaedia to:
Jargon Busters, Checklists, Q&A, Brainstorms, Issue papers, etc. and further afield.
GBC users & potential GGC Users:
GBC Green Building Calculator was developed with small practices with small software budgets in mind.
(the majority of the architectural profession, technicians, technologists, surveyors)
These practices may not be using IES, SAP or SBEM, often reliant upon external consultants to offer these services.
GBC Green Building suite of design and decision tool calculators:
GBC (buildings), GRC (Retrofit), GIC (Interiors), GSC (Screeds), GGS (Glazing), GIRC (Insurance Repair)
Are in various stages of development
Are intended to offer a degree of autonomy to micro-SMEs practices:
to improve their understanding of their outputs
an opportunity to broaden their service.
increase in-house skills.
increase in-house capacity.
GBC could even be used by manufacturers/suppliers in-house as a specification advisory tool/service.
GBC & GGC & BIM:
GBC is BIM Building Information Management
without the Building Information Modelling
(Words and numbers without the CAD computer aided design)
GBC is built upon MS Excel:
There are many interlinked worksheets
‘Accommodation Schedule’ worksheet:
Collects dimensional and numerical building data, hours of operation (hours of temperature control), temperature inside and out
Works out areas and volumes, including multiple rooms of the same or different sizes
Room by room calculations including walls, floors, roof, windows, doors and rooflights
Addresses single or multiple sized windows for commercial or residential buildings
‘Form Factor’ worksheet:
Helps to understand the need to consider the volume to surface area ratios of the building
to help set target U values to achieve a low energy demand building
Addresses special additional geometry of porches, conservatories, dormers, oriels and bays
Targets worksheet:
To support U value & Embodied Carbon calculations: GBC includes:
Target U values from regulations, design standards and campaign targets
Permits adding any national or project targets,
Users can instantaneously switch between them.
Assembles and compares permitted values with conditional formatting to visually show best and worst
‘Elements’ worksheet:
Alongside 39 readymade building elements
GBC has 12 different readymade glazed elemental assemblies.
All of which can receive product specific whole element U values or
numerous components (materials or products) to work out the U values.
These currently include:
- U value, BofQ, EEECSC
- EMD (materials) or EPD (products) to EED (elements) and EBD (Building) calculations.
- Could be added to with: Daylight factor, Solar heat gain, G values, etc.
- Also includes for opaque building fabric: Condensation check, Decrement Delay
There is scope for adding internal glazed partitioning with acoustic and/or fire performance.
‘SecondaryElementsCosts’ worksheet:
Is part of the GBC Green Building Calculator and it needs further development and refinement.
It could become autonomous and renamed GGC Green Glazing Calculator
It shall also remain an integral part of GBC
It was created to reduce glazing assemblies down to all component parts.
Including single, double, triple or multiple glazed sealed units, laminated glasses, etc.
Includes all the components of a window/door/rooflight frame so that any permutation of glazing can be calculated.
It collects glass specification choices, windows sizes, frame and bead materials and profiles, orientation,
It collects or calculates Ug & Uf data inputs and Uf and Uw calculation outputs.
It calculates solar heat gains, internal to external heat losses and net heat gain or loss
Can address Internal and external glazing, mirrors, balustrades and furniture
‘Look up table’ worksheet:
GGC has a Look up table of glazing materials and products, framing materials and products with their respective properties
that feed the glazed elemental calculators mentioned above.
GBC includes BAU datasets, from many standards and other datasets from sources including ICE and EPD.
‘EEECSC’ worksheet:
Embodied Energy, Embodied Carbon & Sequestered Carbon datasets of materials
Is a look up table to feed the calculations
Includes: ICE 1,2 & 3 and other datasets
LCA EPD worksheet:
Sets of data extracted from EPD Environmental Product Declarations for products and generic materials
Reformatted from tables to single rows
Green Building Product Data Collection (GBPDC):
Is intended to address post-Grenfell competencies by collecting manufacturer’s intended primary function, location and application as well as properties and performance for the calculations.
GBPDC feeds GGC once we start collecting that data too.
Currently GBC’s ‘SecondaryElementCosts’ worksheet includes a small selection of product data,
sufficient to build and test the calculations.
GBC also has access to Fire Resistant Glass and multiple skin plastics glazing datasets from GBC Robust specifications
Green Building Product Data Collection GBPDC collects:
- what is the primary and/or secondary functions of the products,
- where was it invented to be used in the building,
- where in the element, inside middle outside,
- physical properties,
- performance characteristics,
- impacts,
- certification and test evidence,
- MSDS,
- EPD datasets.
GBC has collected limited generic data and some product data that was easily available on Single D&TGSU in order to create and test the calculator.
‘Drop Down Lists’ worksheet:
The look up table can be connected into those elemental assemblies via many short bespoke drop down lists;
Short lists to only offer appropriate competent materials but also introduce new to you options.
Choose any item and the adjacent cells will be populated with materials or product specific data to run the calculations.
Bill of Quantities worksheet:
There is a built in Bill of Quantities that allow the users to populate cells to monitor costs
Green Building Price Book GBPB
GBPB to feed the BofQ once we start collecting that data too.
GBC Summary worksheets:
Bring many calculation results together in one place to allow comparison of results in different scenarios
Any change anywhere in the worksheets will provide instantaneous results in the summary sheets.
Subdivision of elements with % of areas and % of heat losses allow comparison and encourage review of some specifications.
Having all this information on one place at the same time means true Value Engineering can be considered avoiding cost cutting
GBC Users
GBC is already being used by Architects, graduates, students, professors, contractor, developer, training centre, charity, self-builders, unidentified others; in or from UK, EU and International.
The Suite of calculators
GBC (Building) works for any building type, for new build.
GRC (Retrofit) is pre-populated with residential data but any building use can be added by users via the tablet survey worksheet
GIC (Interiors) will start with a domestic function, but it is obvious this will grow to do any other building later.
GIC will need to include glazed internal partitions, screens, furniture, etc.
GGC developments can be added to GIC
GBC addresses winter heat loss and summer heat gain through thermal insulation materials options,
Specific Heat capacity, k value conductivity, Density, Decrement Delay.
GGC Green Glazing Calculator does address glazing orientation and summer heat gains.
GBC Adoption
Any user could adopt GBC GRC, GIC or GGC to calculate their own impacts.
This includes contractors with or without CDP Contractors Design Portion contracts: e.g. D&B, CM. MC, etc.
If the post-Grenfell regulation tsunami permits these procurement methods in future.
GBC suite can become part of any specification substitution process to instantaneously monitor all input and output changes with any materials or products swaps.
Once a building is designed and embedded in GBC the files can be handed to the contractor to do any Value engineering as opposed to cost cutting and monitor Carbon impacts Embodied and in use WLCO2)
GBC collects and/or calculates whole building dimensions and quantities, form factor, U value targets, scope of elements, component materials and thicknesses, U value pass or fail, embodied energy, embodied carbon sequestered carbon, initial costs, running costs, pay back periods, carbon back periods, whole life energy and carbon.
Frameless glass:
If the glass is a frameless window: many frame cells will be set at 0
If the assembly is a structural glass assembly SGA with metal supports there is no frame that needs to be included.
(SGA are not modelled yet)
Other Glass applications:
GIC and GGC will have mirrors, shower screens, room division, glass in furniture, glass balustrades and stairs, etc.
GGC must collect and emphasise low impact product data over generic or poor performance products.
And if a manufacturer is ahead of the game all their glasses could outshine the competition.
Competitors’ or generic glasses would need to be included for comparison purposes.
Whilst GBC and GGC as they stand do not address all of the issues yet, with manufacturer’s in-house expertise it/they could be developed to do so.
GIRC Green Insurance Repair Calculator:
GIRC will be tackling Main and Subcontractor impacts of transport of materials staff and plant and embodied impacts to damaged materials out and new materials in, waste and costs.
Worksheets are modular:
All parts or calculators are modular and can be copied between calculators.
All benefits in GGC could be applied to the whole GBE suite of tools and visa versa.
Funding development:
I could envisage partnering in an Innovate UK grant application to develop an ASAD glazing calculator with all of a manufacturers internal expertise to help make GGC as robust as possible.
I would suggest Manufacturer be lead partner.
Innovative Solution to an Industry Challenge
- The environmental impact of glazing specification can be significantly higher than the opaque elements of the building due to their U values and potentially shorter life cycles.
- With an urgency to address global carbon we are increasingly seeing manufacturers providing Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) of materials including Energy, Carbon and other impact data of those materials.
- There are significant amounts of product data available in manufacturers’ literature and Materials Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) but very little is done with this data.
- GGC will extract this information, analysing and processing it to make it comparable across different products and scenarios.
- This goes far beyond carbon counting, comparing data across a vast range of environmental and health metrics.
- GGC will enable designers to compare and evaluate their design and specification choices, providing evidence-based solutions that meet specific client’s preferences for environmental and healthy buildings.
New Revenue Stream
- GGC builds on NGS’s already powerful Green Building Calculator (GBC) and Green Retrofit Calculator (GRC) to build a new tool for a new market.
- GGC Green Glazing Calculator delivers a significantly more powerful user-friendly design and decision tool with markedly more detailed analysis of embodied impacts of material choices.
- Learnings from developing GGC will be applied to improvement of GBC and GRC increasing sales of the whole suite of tools.
Market Readiness
- Building on existing technology and working closely with user representatives means we can develop this solution rapidly, ensuring it meets the needs of the market.
- Following this project we intend to progress quickly, piloting the technology with our user representatives and launching to the wider market within 12 months.
Value
- Building on 4 years of development (GBC and GRC), GGC can be developed at low cost.
Supporting Datasets
- In order for GGC to become and remain vital we have planned a number of websites to serve users of and automatically feed GBC, GRC & GGC:
Green Building Product Data Collection
- GBPDC will include:
- Manufacturer, product, system and application dataset
- Product purpose, materials, properties and performances datasets
- Sufficient for an outline specification
- Potentially a full specification
- Some of a Product/Materials Passport
- Environmental Product Declaration dataset
- Material Safety Data Sheet dataset
- To feed the calculations
Green Building Price Book
- Will collect price data, but the challenge will always be:
- how many do you want?
- what discount is the worth?
- GBPB will collect prices for:
- 1 m2, 10 m2, 100 m2, etc. (product or installation)
- 1 m3, 10 m3, 100 m3, etc.
- 1 pallets full, 10 pallets full, etc.
- 1 unopened unsplit pack, 10 , 100, etc.
- Waste removal by skip sizes, waste categories
- Avoiding ‘your best possible price’ which is unobtainable by most
- Avoiding the downwards spiral of specification substitution and increasing performance gap
- GBPB will seek cost data from:
- Suppliers
- Manufacturers
- Installers (approved or trained by manufacturer or supplier)
- Licenced Waste Handlers
- Deconstruction and Demolition is too bespoke to get cost data
- But as a suggestion:
- Give them 1 month to demolish they will charge you
- Give them 3 months to deconstruct they will pay you
Green Building Robust Specification
GGC will also collect and generate an outline specification for materials or products used
GGC may also collect and generate a full specification
Green Building Facilities Management Specification
Green Building Materials Product Passport
GIC will also collect and generate some of the information needed for a Materials Passport
Green Building Method Statement
© GBE GBC GRC GIC GBL NGS ASWS Brian Murphy aka BrianSpecMan *****
15th March 2024 – 16th March 2024
