BREEAM UK Exercise: Early Decision Making, Component Comparison – One Click LCA Help Centre

This exercise is meant to be completed with the BREEAM UK tool, however any carbon or LCA tool can be used to complete this exercise. It can also be completed with a free 14 day trial.

For this exercise you will need to complete:

Creating a user account. You can register your account at One Click LCA Registration
Create a building project with any available tool, or start a trial for BREEAM UK.
Complete the exercise. The goal is to answer the question, 'Which of all three wall options causes the least carbon emissions?'.
Optional: If you have access to Carbon Designer, start a new baseline design and analyze which building parts cause the highest emissions.

This exercise will help you learn how to perform a few basic actions in One Click LCA. You are encouraged to consult the help center if you are having issues with any of the steps.

Introduction

Your client, Sleep Well Ltd, is a holiday home rental company and is planning to build a new cozy holiday apartment rental building at a green countryside location. Their customers value sustainability over everything and want to indicate their life values in their holiday choices. Sleep Well has a real interest in making the best sustainable choices for their building. The customers are especially interested in reducing global warming, so the building owner has decided to focus on reducing that indicator.

Action 1: At this point you will need register your user account, start your first project and create your first design.

Early Decision Making, Component Comparison.

Sleep Well Ltd has received 3 different options for the external wall from architect. If they wish to reduce life cycle carbon emissions which of the following would be the best choice?

General assumptions: The U-value and thus the energy flow through all the structures is estimated to be similar. All the structures have similar load bearing capacity.

Wall Option 1: Concrete wall with external plastering

Material to include	Thickness of the material
Concrete (reinforced) RC 40	250 mm
Rock Wool Insulation (100kg / m3)	180 mm
Glass Fiber Reinforcement Mesh	1 mm
Render Mortar	10 mm

Wall Option 2: Brick wall with external plastering

Material to include	Thickness of the material
Plasterboard	10 mm
Clay Brick Masonry (225 x 112.5 x 75mm bricks) + 10mm mortar joints	125 mm
EPS Insulation (15 kg / m3)	180 mm
Glass Fiber Reinforcement Mesh	1 mm
Cement Plaster	10 mm

Wall Option 3: Wooden wall with external plastering

Material to include	Thickness of the material
Plasterboard	15 mm
Wood Slat 30 mm/60 mm (distance 0.6m)	-
OSB plate, wet area	19 mm
Rock Wool (60 kg / m2)	180 mm
Wooden Beams 12 cm/18 cm (distance 0.67m)	-
Softboard, weatherboard	22 mm
Wood Slat 30 mm/60 mm (distance 0.6m)	-
Solid wood external layer (dried, planed)	26 mm

Action 2: Make the required calculations to provide the client with necessary information for their decision making. Do this for a time-period of 60 years (BREEAM UK default calculation period is 60 years).

Before you complete your analysis, check if you have answered the following questions:

Do you have enough information to analyze the material quantities and complete the calculations or would you require more information? Did you have to make some assumptions and if so, which assumptions did you make?
Which structure option causes most emissions over the entire life-cycle? (Tip: Compare the designs)
Which individual materials are responsible for those impacts? (Tip: Check the most contr. materials)
During which life-cycle stages are most of the emissions generated? (Tip: Main page graphs)
How did your assumptions impact the results? If your change some of the assumptions, does this affect the overall results? (Tip: Feel free to make additional design options)

Achieving BREEAM UK Certification (requires BREEAM tool and access to BREEAM Manual)

The construction plans are moving forward and Sleep Well Ltd has decided to aim for BREEAM Excellent as that would provide them an easy way to communicate their high sustainability targets for the future hotel clients. To reach that they’ll need full credit potential for Mat 01, and you have been requested to conduct analysis that matches the BREEAM requirements.

To calculate the credit you have requested from other design team members the following information:

Architectural plans including information about the building geometry, section drawings that reveal the material layers and such.
Building area
Project use phase energy and water consumption.

The information from above can be found lower on the page in the annexes.

Preparation for calculations:

Check the materials you have got and the material scope for calculations required for BREEAM (e.g. from a BREEAM Manual). Do you have all the information you need for the calculations?
Which additional information would you need to ask for from the design team to be able to complete the calculation scope?

Completing the calculations, base case:

Complete the calculations on whole building level based on the information available. For external wall choose the best option from task one. After completing the calculations answer following questions:

Which life cycle stages causes the highest impacts for Carbon footprint?
Which elements and individual materials cause the highest impacts for Carbon footprint?
Analyze the other environmental impact categories in the first result table including at least acidification potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP) and ozone depletion potential (ODP). Which life cycle stages cause the highest impacts now? Are the same materials important for different environmental impact categories?

Creating some design options on building level

A good way to find the best options for the project and to steer the design project to more sustainable direction is to try to create some (design) variants. In the previous task we compared structural options.

A similar thing can be done on whole building level. At this point the architect may have already chosen some of the structure options however you can still check if you could find better choices for the same structures. Test at least two options from following:

Making the calculations using exact concrete strength class and choosing concrete with some recycled content replacing cement (e.g. Fly Ash or GGBS).
Using some reclaimed materials such as reclaimed bricks.
You can also test a scenario in which some of the energy is replaced with renewable energy options.

Note that in your reporting you can also include the variants and the analysis results from task 1.

In the previous analysis the owner decided to focus on finding choices for external layer of the project. Was that the best choices or should he have put more effort in analyzing some other elements of the building? If so which elements?

Annexes

Annex 1: Architectural Plans

1. Frontal view (North)

2. Back view (South)

3. Side view (East / West)

4. Layout, above ground level

5. Layout, below ground level

Annex 2: Building Areas

Definition	Area in Square Meters (m2)
Gross Floor Area	1500 m2
External Walls Above Ground	788 m2
External Walls Below Ground	216 m2
Window Surface Area	107 m2
Intermediate Floors	1200 m2
Interior Walls	436 m2
Apartment Partitions	214 m2

Annex 3: Building Consumption Data

Definition	Quantity
Heating, hot water and energy (light fuel oil)	70 kWh / m2 / annum
Electricity	50 kWh / m2 / annum
Water Consumption	80 liters / person / day
Inhabitants	35
Total Water Consumption	1022 m3 / year