Bld-A5 — Building Science
Building Science: General introduction to the thermal environment. Topics include heat, temperature, one-dimensional steady-state processes. Convection: natural and forced. Radiation. Combined radiative and convective surface transfer. Psychrometrics. Thermal comfort. Air quality. Condensation: surface and interstitial. Introduction to compressible viscous flow, friction, and flow in pipes; boundary layer and wind effects.
Subject outline
Bld-A5 Building Science is a Building discipline technical exam (PEO National Examination 07-Bld-A5) on the heat, air and moisture that move through a building enclosure: the loads the enclosure carries, conduction through composite walls and the U-value, thermal radiation and the two spectra, solar geometry and irradiation on a tilted surface, air flow and the air barrier system, stack effect and building pressures, psychrometrics, vapour diffusion and condensation analysis, rain and wind-driven rain control, and interior environments and comfort.
The paper is 3 hours and open book: any textbooks, references or notes are permitted, and any non-communicating calculator may be used. Five of the six questions constitute a complete paper — the first five that appear in the answer book are the ones marked — and each question is of equal value, 20 points.
What this course gives you
Worked solutions — all twelve questions from May 2017 and December 2019, solved in full. Published solutions exist for these two sittings and are used here, but neither of them attempts the vapour-diffusion question: both are authored in full instead. Every calculation has been recomputed independently, and where a published figure does not hold up the correction is flagged at the step that goes wrong, with the corrected value. Study notes — ten condensed topics, from enclosure loads and heat flow through radiation, solar geometry, air flow and psychrometrics to condensation analysis and rain control, each pointing back at the exam questions it answers. Practice & case studies — ten multiple-choice questions and five longer problems, one of them a building-failure case study, with worked answers for every one. Formula sheet — heat flow, radiation, solar geometry, air flow, psychrometrics, sensible and latent heat, and vapour diffusion: everything both papers actually use. This is an open-book exam, so print it and take it in. Printable resources — ten sheets, four of them data tables (saturation vapour pressure and a dew-point grid computed exactly; thermal conductivities and vapour permeabilities as typical handbook ranges — the numbers the question papers leave you to assume), plus four blank exam stationery templates. Practice papers — the two question papers on their own, unmarked, for a timed run.