Ventilation Requirements For Inter Terrace Rebuild

[parmeet 0]

Hello dear forumers,

This may not be the right place to post this but any advice given will be greatly appreciated. We recently made the jump into purchasing a small plot of land to do a full rebuild and it has been an extremely steep learning curve for us not to mention the budget constrains we are working within to put this together.

The project however is moving along and construction will begin in a week or two. I have negotiated with the builder to provide me with everything I will possibly need except for the lightining and carpentry as our budget simply cannot afford it. I decided to put our money in the structure and slowly put in the furniture as we go along. Although airconditioning will be provided our house has two skylights running through the 2.5 storey building thus making it a very open space to work with where ventilation is concerned.

Ours is a small family and we dont expect to entertain guests very often so on a practicle note ceiling fans are very important as we dont want to be using the airconditioning units unless its for the night.

However our house is rather long and narrow.

Hall 6M X 23M

Common Rooms 3M X 8M

Study + TV Room 6M X 6M

Master 6M X 8M

Given these dimensions I was wondering what advice other forumers have for such a space. How do I provite adequate ventilation without littering the place with fans. Rooms generally have 3M headroom clearance and the hall has around 4.2M. Is it advisable to put two fans in a room (although i feel that really is rather unsightly). What kind of fans can i put in the hall with such large clearances. Are there fans with greater than 60 inch blades.

Again this is our first step into landed spaces and thus this is totally new. The space we are dealing with is very new to us. Would really appreciate any advice fellow forumers have to make this a practicle living space without sending my utilities bill through the roof.

I understand in the grand scale of things utilitiy bills are the least of my problems but I cannot stress enough that this is a big step for our family and our view that this could potentially make us a little money down the road afterwhich we can move into a smaller more comfortable space. So its a psedu investment and a lifestyle choice that we have made that has made us scale back many of the smaller luxiries we once enjoyed with a common thinking that putting all our money into this will eventually give us greater returns down the road. Therefore any small differences I make today will go a long way tommorrow. Apologies for the long post.

Regards

[Lauer 15]

  On 5/20/2013 at 11:12 AM, parmeet said:

Hello dear forumers,

This may not be the right place to post this but any advice given will be greatly appreciated. We recently made the jump into purchasing a small plot of land to do a full rebuild and it has been an extremely steep learning curve for us not to mention the budget constrains we are working within to put this together.

The project however is moving along and construction will begin in a week or two. I have negotiated with the builder to provide me with everything I will possibly need except for the lightining and carpentry as our budget simply cannot afford it. I decided to put our money in the structure and slowly put in the furniture as we go along. Although airconditioning will be provided our house has two skylights running through the 2.5 storey building thus making it a very open space to work with where ventilation is concerned.

Ours is a small family and we dont expect to entertain guests very often so on a practicle note ceiling fans are very important as we dont want to be using the airconditioning units unless its for the night.

However our house is rather long and narrow.

Hall 6M X 23M

Common Rooms 3M X 8M

Study + TV Room 6M X 6M

Master 6M X 8M

Given these dimensions I was wondering what advice other forumers have for such a space. How do I provite adequate ventilation without littering the place with fans. Rooms generally have 3M headroom clearance and the hall has around 4.2M. Is it advisable to put two fans in a room (although i feel that really is rather unsightly). What kind of fans can i put in the hall with such large clearances. Are there fans with greater than 60 inch blades.

Again this is our first step into landed spaces and thus this is totally new. The space we are dealing with is very new to us. Would really appreciate any advice fellow forumers have to make this a practicle living space without sending my utilities bill through the roof.

I understand in the grand scale of things utilitiy bills are the least of my problems but I cannot stress enough that this is a big step for our family and our view that this could potentially make us a little money down the road afterwhich we can move into a smaller more comfortable space. So its a psedu investment and a lifestyle choice that we have made that has made us scale back many of the smaller luxiries we once enjoyed with a common thinking that putting all our money into this will eventually give us greater returns down the road. Therefore any small differences I make today will go a long way tommorrow. Apologies for the long post.

Regards

For terraced, it is the architect's top priority to design for adequate natural lighting and ventilation. When we speak of natural ventilation, it refers to the necessary openings to allow air to flow in and out. This is not the same as having numerous fans stirring basically stale (and heated up) air within a house.

Generally, for adequate natural lighting and ventilation, there could be 2 models for terraced:

- The house is about 13m long. You could typically find this in cluster terraced design; The Greenwood, Luxus Hill etc

- A courtyard (airwell) in between.

You mentioned having skylights, which allow natural lighting to come through. I supposed that it would help slightly with natural ventilation, but not much, as hot air rises but traps in the area underneath the skylights' glass panels.

So, I am slightly curious as to why you are getting feedback from a forum, but not having them addressed by the architect, as it sounds like the house has been designed and is undergoing the construction?

Just my 2-cents...

Cheers!

[fcar 0]

  On 5/22/2013 at 7:53 AM, Lauer said:

For terraced, it is the architect's top priority to design for adequate natural lighting and ventilation. When we speak of natural ventilation, it refers to the necessary openings to allow air to flow in and out. This is not the same as having numerous fans stirring basically stale (and heated up) air within a house.

Generally, for adequate natural lighting and ventilation, there could be 2 models for terraced:

- The house is about 13m long. You could typically find this in cluster terraced design; The Greenwood, Luxus Hill etc

- A courtyard (airwell) in between.

You mentioned having skylights, which allow natural lighting to come through. I supposed that it would help slightly with natural ventilation, but not much, as hot air rises but traps in the area underneath the skylights' glass panels.

So, I am slightly curious as to why you are getting feedback from a forum, but not having them addressed by the architect, as it sounds like the house has been designed and is undergoing the construction?

Just my 2-cents...

Cheers!

wow lauer, you a qualified architect? Seem to know more about house design then real architects i spoken to.

No wonder the sg condo pple said you redevelop old plots to resell.

[Lauer 15]

  On 5/22/2013 at 12:41 PM, fcar said:

wow lauer, you a qualified architect? Seem to know more about house design then real architects i spoken to.

No wonder the sg condo pple said you redevelop old plots to resell.

No la, I am just here to assist where possible...

The terraced house is of course a British import; you could find the highest concentration of terraced housing in England, of all parts of the world. In England, you could observe that a typical terraced house is hardly more than 13m long, because the law required ample natural lighting for a dwelling. With a suitably sized window, natural lighting could only reach about 5m into a room from the window.

So, where you have a room infront and then a room at the back, with a typical staircase in between, we would have a measurement of (5m + 2m + 5m) = 12m for the length of British terraced house, where the staircase also serves to facilitate cross ventilation. And in England, where the Summer temperatures hardly go beyond 26 celsius, one would hardly feel suffocating inside a room.

But not so in a tropic like Singapore, where the conditions are hot and humid most of the year, with monsoon rains breaking the heat. And yet, we could find in these conditions, terraced housing that is typically far longer than the British's 13m length.

Of course, this is just a modern development.

In the original, older terraced 1-storey, there is indeed the sensible courtyard, or airwell, that facilitates natural lighting and ventilation for a longer terraced. As more and more of this gets rebuilt, the courtyards disappeared from the landscape. I personally found it miserable walking into a terraced needing artificial lighting, while the sun shone brightly outside, not to mention breathing stale air inside.

The architects, they are very pro-client. As long as you are happy, they don't really raise what I wrote above. Afterall, they don't live in the house. Also, most are pretty much unmotivated to design well for a terraced.

When we look at a semi-d, it has a side where all the windows are placed, so there is no issue with natural lighting and ventilation.

Now, if you could have the semi-d in a cardboard model, and you fold-in the side where the windows are, there the folded-in area would essentially become the courtyard in a terraced. It is conceptually very simple, a terraced design that could achieve the livability of semi-d.

Within the courtyard, a suitable tree (depending on the house orientation, and the amount of sunlight captured with the courtyard), could grow 10m high. You could have 1 or 2 of the rooms with small balcony/balconies protruding into the courtyard. Very interesting to look at inside a terraced like this, although there is nothing much you could do outside, as it has only one facade.

Just my 2-cents...

Cheers!

[parmeet 0]

Hi Layer thank you for your advice. I wished I had factored some of your ideas in. As of now we have two adjacent skylights one in the space around the staircase and the other much bigger one is directly opposite that.

The length of my house from my main door (not main gate) to my backyard door is 23 M so it's a long and narrow house. These two skylights should allow in natural lights but never thought of natural ventilation. I will speak to my architect to asking him if we can do anything about it now but I doubt so.

Given these constraints I was hoping for some insight on how to mechanically cool such a space efficiently and economically. Thank you.

[Lauer 15]

  On 5/30/2013 at 2:21 AM, parmeet said:

Hi Layer thank you for your advice. I wished I had factored some of your ideas in. As of now we have two adjacent skylights one in the space around the staircase and the other much bigger one is directly opposite that.

The length of my house from my main door (not main gate) to my backyard door is 23 M so it's a long and narrow house. These two skylights should allow in natural lights but never thought of natural ventilation. I will speak to my architect to asking him if we can do anything about it now but I doubt so.

Given these constraints I was hoping for some insight on how to mechanically cool such a space efficiently and economically. Thank you.

Hi,

As roofing structure is constructed at the later stage, (the building is constructed upwards), it is not too late to accommodate for an openable skylight.

So, instead of a fixed skylight, which is basically consisting of a glass panel, you could opt to install an openable skylight, which is a window installation. It is far more expensive than a fixed skylight obviously, maybe about $3,000+ for a small one, but I could assure you that the money would be well spent. The way the air flow the moment the skylight window is being opened could be amazing.

There are many brands, for example Velux, and also get the electrical version so that you could open the skylight window with a remote control.

Cheers!