In our experience at JRG Building Engineering, every home- and business owner wants to keep their energy bills to a minimum. Our team has extensive experience in designing buildings to be as energy efficient as possible, allowing our clients to do just that. In this article, we will focus on one aspect of energy efficient design known as building envelope engineering. We encourage you to keep reading to learn more about what building envelope engineering is and how it works.
- What is a building envelope? – The first question you might have about building envelope engineering is what exactly a building envelope is. This term refers to all the barriers that separate the inside of a building from the outside, such as the walls, roof, windows, and doors.
- Why is the building envelope important? – One of the most significant sources of energy waste in buildings is passive heat loss and gain through the outer walls, windows, roof, etc. While the building envelope is solid enough to keep intruders out, it might be permeable to heat energy, allowing heat to leak in and out. This passive movement of heat forces your building’s HVAC system to spend more energy to maintain your desired interior temperature. Good building envelope engineering minimizes passive heat transfer as much as possible to prevent this cycle and save energy.
- What can our building envelope engineering team do for you? – Our building envelope engineers have the right experience to design highly efficient buildings for new construction, and we can offer suggestions on how to improve the envelope of existing structures.