Meeting and Exceeding Building Code Thermal Performance Requirements

Energy and thermal performance requirements play an increasingly significant role in building codes throughout North America. This wasn’t always the case. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-onditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) published one of the first building energy standards, ASRHRAE Standard 90, in 1975.

The earliest national standard for building energy performance, the National Energy Code for Buildings (NECB) of Canada (NECB 2011), was introduced to Canada in 1997 while the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) was not introduced in the United States until 2000.

As public awareness and concern grew over global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, and other environmental issues, so did the prevalence of energy and environmental rating systems such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

In time building rating systems, energy standards, and model energy codes encouraged the evolution of building codes. Today’s building codes integrate many of the energy and thermal performance requirements from earlier standards and model codes.

Dr.John Straube, Ph.D., P.Eng., rdh.com, an internationally recognized authority on building science, has authored a definitive guide on Meeting and Exceeding Building Code Thermal Performance Requirements. This guide, published by the Canadian Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute, and distributed by RDH Building Science Inc., provides designers, builders, and building owners with:

• an introduction to the need for, and challenges associated in delivering highly-insulated
  building enclosures (Section 1.2),
• a summary of the current thermal performance requirements in the Canadian codes
  (Section 1.4 Energy Codes, Programs, and Standards),
• an explanation of approximate methods to predict the thermal performance of common
  precast concrete systems for use during early design stages (Chapter 3), and
• a catalogue of example precast enclosure system solutions to meet the thermal
  performance requirements for each Province and climate zones in Canada (Chapter 4).

The Guide is available here:

Photo Credit: Studio 804