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Net Zero Design With Sefaira

The document summarizes how an architecture firm used Sefaira software to optimize the design of an affordable housing project in Washington DC to achieve net-zero energy status. The project involved designing two blocks of housing units with limited budgets and materials. Using Sefaira, the team analyzed shading strategies, specified efficient water fixtures, and confirmed the solar panel capacity needed to offset energy usage. Sefaira allowed the team to calculate energy usage and generation, help the project meet its net-zero goal, and ensure cost-effective material choices within constraints.

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Tauseef Ahmad
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162 views5 pages

Net Zero Design With Sefaira

The document summarizes how an architecture firm used Sefaira software to optimize the design of an affordable housing project in Washington DC to achieve net-zero energy status. The project involved designing two blocks of housing units with limited budgets and materials. Using Sefaira, the team analyzed shading strategies, specified efficient water fixtures, and confirmed the solar panel capacity needed to offset energy usage. Sefaira allowed the team to calculate energy usage and generation, help the project meet its net-zero goal, and ensure cost-effective material choices within constraints.

Uploaded by

Tauseef Ahmad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Net Zero Design with Sefaira: eCasa Affordable Housing

“I would use Sefaira at an even earlier stage to optimize the envelope… Knowing this
information earlier on could have enabled the team to make more cost-effective building
material choices.”
Stefan Schwarzkopf, Design Director at Inscape Publico.
The Brief
 Project type: Affordable Housing for low-income families
 Location: Washington DC, USA
 Building type / program: Residential
 Floor area/stories/occupancy: 2 separate blocks of 6 housing units / Two stories each
 Project stage & completion date: Concept stage
 Other: Net-zero energy
The aim of the eCasa Project is to provide affordable, high-performance housing to low-income
families in Washington, DC, with a specific performance goal of achieving Net Zero energy
status. The project is being designed by Inscape Publico, a nonprofit architecture firm, for Mi
Casa Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides affordable housing opportunities to low and
moderate-income families intending to sustain diverse and healthy communities in the
Washington DC and Baltimore area.
Collaboration between Mi Casa and the Department of Housing and Community Development
will make the project scalable to multiple sites addressing the complex changes that are affecting
neighborhoods in the greater DC area.
Navigating Project Limitations
Inscape Publico had designed and specified the building blocks but wanted to analyze and
optimize the project where possible. Some challenges to the project were a limited budget, a
limited palette of building materials, and a tight project timeline. Using Sefaira to carry out
analysis enabled the team to optimize the changeable factors within the project, and facilitate the
net-zero energy aspirations (or demonstrate that the project was on track for Net Zero energy
status).

Site
plan showing the location of both blocks on adjacent streets.
 

To achieve its goals, the design team needed to:


 calculate the baseline building performance based on established building materials.
 minimize energy consumption to achieve net-zero, by utilizing high-performance building
construction and specifying high-efficiency appliances and systems.
 calculate how much renewable energy would be generated using pre-specified solar
photovoltaic panels, to confirm the quantity required to achieve net-zero.
 minimize annual operating costs for the inhabitants by specifying highly efficient water
fixtures.

The Process
To get started, the design team set up the analysis model, inputting the pre-determined envelope
and HVAC values and baseline variables such as occupancy, lighting power density, plug load,
temperature setpoints, and diversity factors. Next, potential strategies were investigated:
 Shading type and depth: Using Sefaira’s response curves, an optimum 2.5ft deep horizontal
projection was specified over each glazed opening. This reduced annual space cooling by 14%.
 Water fixtures: To reduce waste and operating costs, high-efficiency water fixtures were
specified. Annual operating costs were reduced by 37% because less energy was required to
heat water and water usage was much less overall.

Minnesota Street Housing Unit and its corresponding Monthly Energy Consumption Graph
 

By specifying high performance values for shading and water fixtures, the design team ensured
that the final annual energy consumption figure would be as low as 21,372kBTU/year for
Minnesota Street and 21,073kBTU/year for 27th Street).

27th Street Housing Unit and its corresponding Monthly Energy Consumption Graph

Having optimized the building envelope for performance, the next step was to offset the energy
consumed by generating as much or more energy on-site. At this point, the team inputs
predetermined solar pv specifications to calculate the expected output and confirm that Net Zero
energy consumption could be achieved.

Result
Sefaira results confirmed that two arrays of 18 photovoltaic panels per block would generate
21,473kBTU/year for Minnesota Street and 22,025kBTU/year for 27th Street, thereby ensuring
the project would achieve net-zero energy status.
Stefan Schwarzkopf Design Director at Inscape Publico said, “I would use Sefaira at an even
earlier stage to optimize the envelope instead of simply analyzing the materials and details we
had already established. For example, the predetermined roof assembly R-value was quite high,
however, Sefaira showed that a roof assembly with a lower R-value performed just as well.
Knowing this information earlier on could have enabled the team to make more cost-effective
building material and detailing choices.”
Sefaira enabled the team of Inscape Publico and Mi Casa to calculate the annual energy
consumption, investigate energy-saving strategies, and apply renewable energy generation,
helping the project reach Net-Zero energy status.
Schwarzkopf concluded, “Sefaira takes the guesswork out of the process of evaluating various
design choices to find the ones with optimal impact, helping the design team to fluidly refine not
only the project design itself but also the project goals.”

FURTHER READING
 Sefaira Masterclass: Achieving Net Zero Energy
 The Miller Hull Partnership: Customer Case Study
 A Tactical Approach to Performance-Based Design

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