Effect of Glazing on Building Envelope Heat gain

Glazing in building facade plays a very very important role. The requirement of glazing is to enter the light and fresh air and also offer view to connect interior living space to the outdoor. However, glazing and windows are major source of unwanted heat gain in buildings especially during summers thus it becomes important to select the well sized windows and glazing assembly so as to optimize the overall energy consumption and cost as well.

Typically , the windows and glazing determines 40% of the building cooling energy requirements and selecting the right size of glazing can reduce the energy consumption significantly and your payback period can be from 2 to 3 years.

In order to illustrate the effect of glazing on your building it is important to carry out the energy simulation in any of the energy modelling tool.

Example-

As we can see in example the overall heat transfer coefficient of glazing varies from 6.1 W/m2K for a single glazed facade to a valve of 2 W/m2K for doubled glazed facade.

The effect is analysed by simulation in eQuest energy modelling tool and the outputs shows the significant amount of energy saving in overall energy consumption of the building by adopting glass type with a low u-value.