Overheating is becoming a significant issue in new homes and apartments.
Studies by The Good Homes Alliance and the Zero Carbon Hub have shown that ever warmer, more airtight homes are posing serious risks to health and in some extreme cases, causing fatalities.
Overheating Analysis can predict risks, inform designers and developers, and improve the indoor environment for occupants.
There are several instances where overheating analysis may be required:
- To provide thermal comfort credits within a BREEAM Assessment
- To achieve industry standards for thermal comfort i.e healthcare and education
- Where designers want to reduce risk of overheating
- To design-out overheating risks in dwellings identified by SAP Calculations
- As requested as part of the planning application
- To avoid future issues with overheating and owner/occupier complaints
Some dwellings in particular carry a higher overheating risk – for example, highly glazed south facing, single aspect apartments with limited cross ventilation. Planning officers may identify such dwellings as high risk and request a report within a Sustainability Statement or Energy Statement.
CIBSE TM52 (The Limits of Thermal Comfort: Avoiding Overheating in European Buildings 2013) is a Technical Memorandum (TM) to assist with assessing overheating in buildings.
TM52 outlines three criteria – a room or building that fails any two of the following three criteria is classed as overheating:
- The number of hours that the operative temperature can exceed the threshold comfort temperature
- The severity of overheating within one day – this is function of both temperature rise and it’s duration
- An absolute maximum daily temperature for a room, beyond which the level of overheating is acceptable
More detailed information about using simulation to predict the danger of overheating is available in CIBSE Guide A. CIBSE KS16: How to manage overheating in buildings.
Beechfield Consulting Engineers provide full TM52 Overheating reports and with our M&E expertise, offer the client solutions to any issues.