Assessment of the variation impacts of window on energy consumption and carbon footprint

Energy efficiency has become increasingly important to the community, regulatory bodies and industry in recent years. Dominant per capita energy consumption is associated with home used energy resources which also contribute to greenhouse gases. The main objective of this work is to evaluate the direct impacts of variations of multi-glazed windows on the sustainability through BIM software and determining the rate of energy consumption and carbon foot print in accordance with the implemented changes in a building. The altered parameters in this study are number of glazed layers, filled gases, sizes and orientations of the windows. The case study is a 56.25 m(2) hut which is built in one level and located in Kuala Lumpur. The simulation is carried out by using ArchiCad 14 software which is one of the pioneers in BIM and its new sustainability plug-in integrated into this software known as Grafosoft EcoDesigner. It is concluded that the type of gas used in double and triple glazed windows and increasing the size of windows to 41% of an area of the window to floor surface ratio do not differ significantly from 34% of area of window to floor surface ratio with regard to the energy consumption and carbon footprint in tropical areas. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAAS