From the course: Revit: Detailing to European Codes

Design solutions for a house - Revit Architecture Tutorial

From the course: Revit: Detailing to European Codes

Start my 1-month free trial

Design solutions for a house

“

- Now this building is located on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales and it's on a rocky sort of headland overlooking the seas. It's very close to the sea, and we can see that in the distance there. Also in the far distance you'll be able to see North Devon Coast on a good day. The thing that sort of characterizes this area, and if you look on a map and look at the temperate zones around the globe, you'll see it's an awful lot of green trees and the green stuff generally because you get a lot of moisture. It's not necessarily the tropical humid air that you get, but it's certainly characterized by an awful lot of moisture. Now, the temperatures will stay probably mostly about freezing in the winter, and the days are quite short especially around about the 21st of December. You're talking about six or seven hours of daylight at best. Then in the summer, you benefit from very long days. So the sunrise will be about 4:30 and it might set at about 9:30. So you'll get very long days, not always scorching days but you do get a lot of light coming into the space. So it's those sorts of things that we need to bear in mind when we're designing this. Now, the thing that is going to be the overarching design consideration is to maximize the weatherproofing and robustness of the facade of this. The last thing we want is wind driven water blown off the sea full of salt to get into the cracks and crevices of our building and start rotting them or decay in them as soon as possible. So good choice of non-corrosive materials is something we need to consider. Also, if we just come over to the section, section A-A let's flick on that, then we need to sort of address some of the key sort of weak spots of the building. This Ridge, for example, the eaves, need to make sure that's anchored down properly. The thresholds were wind-driven. Our water could penetrate. Also, all the window openings as well, we need to make sure we've got good seals around that. The other thing we need to consider is thermal installation especially in the winter, even if it's zero outside and you want the temperature to be a stable sort of 21, 22 degrees inside, then you need to have a good thermal barrier to stop that from coming out. So insulation in the walls, insulation the roof, installation of floor, that's absolutely a must. And in the UK, we're looking at a U value of 0.18 in the walls on 0.13 for the roof and the floor. So other things we need to make sure we don't get a problem with is condensation and the generation of vapor and making sure the building is breathable as possible. So it seems almost counter-intuitive that whilst we need to protect the building from water ingress, we also need to make sure that moisture in the form of water vapor can get out of the building. There are several different ways in which we can do that, and we'll discuss those in a bit more detail when we start talking about the elements such as the roof, the walls, and the floors. But for now, we'll just leave those hanging. And in the next chapter, we'll get to grips with the site location.

Contents