COMMERCIAL ENERGY ASSESSMENTS

The commercial department at Sustainability House provides energy assessments of Class 2-9 buildings.

Every new commercial building development, extension or alteration is required to show compliance with the energy efficiency provisions as set out in Section J of the BCA Volume One. An energy efficiency assessment should be requested as part of every building development application.

The most common ways of assessing compliance with Section J are the Deemed-to-Satisfy method and the Verification Methods (JV1 and JV3).

Sustainability House recommends using Verification Methods as they allow a broader scope of building design which often results in compliance with significant building cost savings.

 

VERIFICATION METHOD JV1

• Sustainability House can provide thermal calculation assessments for the residential components of Class 2 and Class 4 buildings.
• The thermal calculation assessment uses NatHERS second generation rating tools (AccuRate, FirstRate5 or BERS Pro).

 

VERIFICATION METHOD JV3

• For Class 3 and Class 5-9 buildings, Sustainability House specialises in the use of the JV3 method to show compliance with Section J.
• This process looks at the predicted annual energy use of a building using thermal analysis software and compares it to a reference building designed to BCA Deemed-to-Satisfy provisions.
• This comparison allows more flexibility in building design, while still proving compliance.

 

DEEMED-TO-SATISFY

• If preferred, Sustainability House can provide a DTS report for Section J that assesses each aspect of the proposed building against the requirements of Parts J1-J4 and J6-J8 of the BCA.
• In most cases, in conjunction with the HVAC designer, we can also assess the relevant DTS requirements for Part J5 (Air-Conditioning and Ventilation Systems).