Development of Thermal Envelope Design Guidelines for Federal Office Buildings

Book excerpt: Office building envelopes are generally successful in meeting a range of structural, aesthetic and thermal requirements. However, poor thermal envelope performance will occur when there are discontinuities in the envelope insulation and air barrier systems, such as thermal bridges and air leakage sites. These discontinuities result from designs that do not adequately account for heat, air and moisture transmission, with many thermal defects being associated with inappropriate or inadequate detailing of the connections of envelope components. Despite the existence of these thermal envelope performance problems, information is available to design and construct envelopes that do perform well. In order to close the gap between available knowledge and current practice, the Public Buildings Service of the General Services Administration has entered into an interagency agreement with the Center for Building Technology of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop thermal envelope design guidelines for federal office buildings. The goal of this project is to transfer the knowledge on thermal envelope design and performance from the building research, design and construction communities into a form that will be used by building design professionals. This report describes the NIST/GSA envelope design guidelines development at the end of the first year of effort on the project. The effort to this point has consisted of a literature review of research results and technical information on thermal envelope performance and design, an assessment of existing design guidelines as they relate to the thermal envelope, and the development of a format and outline for the design guidelines.