Proposed Residence @ Sorrento, VIC – VURB Alternative Solution

Services

Verification Using a Reference Building (VURB)

Our added value

We were engaged to undertake a VURB Performance Solution to reduce the overall glazing cost of the proposed 3-storey project. The building was designed to passively reduce the cooling demand predominately. The use of adjustable horizontal shading devices and large ground-adjacent external surfaces made the cooling demand non-significant compared to the total thermal energy demand.

Utilization of shading devices to reduce the cooling demand in summer enabled us to increase overall SHGC of windows to maximize the winter solar gain and to reduce the building heating demand while maintaining the summer cooling demand.

With a small added XPS insulation to the concrete slab, we get to further decrease the heating demand and to increase window U-values and thus reduce the glazing costs. Finally, after some iterations we managed to increase the overall U-values from U3.0 to U3.7 (more than 20% increase).