Building services

CVE 317/BCVE 317

Ho Technical University
Department of Civil Engineering
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Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, learners should be able to:

• define building services and explain the various components
of building services
• describe how building services are integrated into a building;
• interpret building services drawings, specify building codes
and sustainable design of buildings
• explain how building services modify the indoor
environment;
• determine how building performance and regulatory
requirements affect the design and commissioning of
building services.
• explain how energy is supplied to and used in buildings and
the impact of energy efficiency on the design of sustainable
buildings.
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Course Content

• Introduction to building services: classification of

buildings, sustainable buildings, the building industry
and green house gas emissions, the Kyoto protocol etc.
• Mechanical systems: HVAC(Heating, ventilating, air
conditioning) systems, Plumbing and Sanitation system,
gas supply. Fire protection systems
• Electrical systems: electrical power, lightning systems,
auxiliary systems
• Building operation systems: transportation i.e. elevators,
escalators etc., Automation i.e. environmental controls,
management, etc.

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Course Content

• Building services integration into buildings,

• Interpretation of building service drawings
• Modification of indoor environment, performance and
regulatory requirements that affect the design and
commissioning of building services
• Energy, energy efficient buildings and the impact of
energy efficiency in the design of sustainable buildings

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Mode of Delivery

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Recommended Reading List

• Hall, F., & Greeno, R. (2017). Building services handbook. Routledge.

• Chadderton, D. V. (2013). Building services engineering. Routledge.
Laustsen, J. (2008). Energy efficiency requirements in building
codes, energy efficiency policies for new buildings. IEA Information
Paper.
• Hassan, G. (1996). Building services. Macmillan
• De Chernatony, L., Drury, S., & Segal-Horn, S. (2003). Building a
services brand: stages, people and orientations. Service Industries
Journal, 23(3), 1-21.
• Hesselbach, J., Herrmann, C., Detzer, R., Martin, L., Thiede, S., &
Ludemann, B. (2008). Energy efficiency through optimised
coordination of production and technical building services. In LCE
2008: 15th CIRP International Conference on Life Cycle Engineering:
Conference Proceedings (p. 624). CIRP.
Students are encouraged to visit the Nunya library for other sources of
reading materials.
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Introduction

• Basically, building services is what makes the building

come to life or what makes buildings work.
• Building services are critical to the effective building
design because it makes buildings more efficient,
functional and comfortable.
• Building services are essential to human comfort as they
help in areas such as water management, heating
ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). They also
manage systems such as communication and lifts or
escalators, plus the essential safety functions of fire
detection and response and security.

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Introduction

• Building services engineers are increasingly designing

and assessing buildings to include future climate
predictions such as rising temperatures, and water
scarcity so that our buildings can work more efficiently
and further reduce the impact to the environment.

• Building services engineers design, install and service

equipment and systems found in buildings

• Building services engineers design energy

efficient(including green buildings, passive buildings,
plus-houses and zero-energy buildings)

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Building Services Integration

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Buildings

• Let us ask ourselves some few questions

Why is this
building so
well
known??

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Classification of Buildings

• Residential Buildings:
• Sleeping accommodation is provided
• Permanent or temporal dwelling
• With or without dining facilities
• Example: apartments, private houses, hotels, hostels,
holiday campus, bungalows, dormitories

• Educational buildings
• Buildings meant for education
• Example: schools, colleges, universities, training institutes

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Classification of Buildings

• Institutional buildings
• Any building used for the purposes such as medical, care
for infants or aged persons, detention
• Normally provides sleeping accommodation for
occupants.

• Assembly buildings
• Building where groups of people assemble or gather for
amusement, recreation, social, religious.
• Example: theatres, auditorium, exhibition halls, museums,
gymnasiums, restaurants, places of worship, public
transportation

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 Classification of Buildings

• Business buildings
• Buildings which is used for purposes such as transaction of
business, keeping of accounts and records, dispensaries
and clinics, news stand, barber shops, banks, city halls.

• Industrial buildings
• Building or structure in which products are fabricated,
assembled or processed.
• Example: laboratories, assembly plants, laundries, gas
plants, power plants, refineries, diaries

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 Classification of Buildings

• Storage buildings
• Buildings used primarily for the storage of goods,
merchandise, vehicles or animals.
• Example: ware house, depots, store houses, truck
terminals, garages,
•
• Hazardous buildings
• Used for the storage, manufacture of materials which are
liable to burn and hazardous to health and building.
• Buildings used for the storage of gases under high pressure
or for the storage of highly flammable liquids or explosive
materials.

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 Building Services

• Basically, building services is what makes the building

come to life or what makes buildings work.
• Building services are divided between design and
installation and recently B.S is closely related to
sustainability and green technology
• Building services are critical to the effective building
design because it makes buildings more efficient,
functional and comfortable.
• Building services are essential to human comfort as they
help in areas such as water management, heating
ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC).
• They also manage systems such as communication and
lifts or escalators, plus the essential safety functions of
fire detection and response and security.
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 Building Services

• A building services engineer are increasingly designing

and assessing buildings to include future climate
predictions such as rising temperatures, and water
scarcity so that our buildings can work more efficiently
and further reduce the impact to the environment.

• Building services engineers design, install and service

equipment and systems found in buildings

• Building services engineers design energy

efficient(including green buildings, passive buildings,
plus-houses and zero-energy buildings)

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 Green Buildings

Ghana

Japan

India

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 What does a building services engineer
do??
• He is responsible for the heating, water, electrical and
telecommunication systems inside a building. Duties could
include
• Drawing up plans using computer-aided design and building
information and building information modelling software.
• Estimating costs
• Making sure jobs meet building regulations and health and
safety requirements.
• Managing engineering inspection and maintenance
programmes
• Meeting with building suppliers to keep up to date with new
product development.

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 The Building Industry and Carbon Emissions

• I have attached a document to the slides. Kindly read

more on this from the document.

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 The building industry & Green house gas emissions

• To decarbonize the building sector, the production of electricity

for use in buildings needs to reduce its dependability on fossil
fuels such as coal and natural gas and instead shift to carbon free
alternatives like solar, wind and nuclear.
• GHG are also produced during the manufacturing process of
building materials such as steel, cement (a key component of
concrete) and glass.
• GHG emissions which are produced during the mining,
processing, manufacturing, transportation and installation of
building materials are referred to as embodied carbon of a
material.
• The carbon can be reduced by using low carbon materials for
building structures and finishes.
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 The building industry & Green house
gas emissions

• Emissions produced by fossil fuel which are burned on site to

generate hot water, provide space heating and supply cooking
appliances can be reduced using carbon free alternatives such as
heat pumps and induction cooktop all in an attempt to
decarbonize the building sector.

Also, visit this site

• https://www.ifu.dk/en/news/new-cement-investment-in-ghana
-reduces-carbon-emissions-by-up-to-20-per-cent/

• https://www.ifu.dk/en/news/new-cement-investment-in-ghana
-reduces-carbon-emissions-by-up-to-20-per-cent/

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 Assignment 1

Form three groups and make presentations on the following

• The hydropower paradox: is this energy as clean as it seems.
• One school of thought claims the hydropower energy is clean,
others claim it is not clean. Some are of the view that it is both. To
an extent clean, to another extent, not clean. Develop arguments
from both sides and make a presentation on it.
• The Kyoto Protocol, 1997.
• State where this meeting took place
• How many heads of states or representatives signed the
agreements
• What does the protocol entail

• The Paris Agreement

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Building Services

Building services are mainly divided into:

• Mechanical Systems
• HVAC Systems
• Plumbing and Sanitation systems
• Gas supply
• Fire protection systems
• Electrical Systems
• Power Supply
• Lighting Systems
• Auxiliary Systems
• Building Operation System
• Transportation (lifts, escalators, etc.)
• Automation
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Impact of Mechanical and Electrical Systems

• Demands considerable amount of floor and ceiling space

–proper space allocation is needed during preliminary
planning
• Adds to the cost of the buildings
• Increase in energy consumption

The complexity of installation of Mechanical &Electrical

Systems lies in:
• Living standards of the society
• Climatic conditions of the region
• Occupancy and quality of buildings

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 Building Services System

Elements that influence the design of building services system:

Moisture, Heat, Ventilation/Air , Lighting, Acoustic

• Moisture
• The humidity content of water vapour in the air can be expressed
as absolute humidity, humidity ratio(relative) or water vapour
pressure deficit. The effect of high air humidity is dew and fog.

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 Building Services System

• Heat
• Heat is energy transfer between a system and its surroundings
other than by work or transfer of matter. In this instance, a
building should consider a thermal comfort for human.
• Maintaining this standard of thermal comfort for occupants of
buildings or other enclosure is one of the important goals of
HVAC( heating, ventilation and air conditioning) design
engineers.
• Heat from building can gain from external and internal.

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 Building Services System

• Generally, there are four heat transfer sources within any

building, they are
• Fabric: heat loss
• Ventilation: heat loss
• Solar: heat gains
• Internal: heat gains

• Solar heat gain through windows and/or walls provides a

valuable contribution of space heating.
• Sources of heat inside a building also include occupants, lights,
equipment.

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 Building Services System

• Ventilation/ Air: this is

the process to maintain
the level of comfort for
temperature, humidity
and oxygen in a space
with the fresh air flowing
from one space to another
space to replace the dirty
air.
• Required air quantity
are different depending
on the nature of
buildings and activities.

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 Natural Ventilation

• Natural ventilation is an economic means of providing air changes

in a building.
• It uses components integral with construction such as air bricks
and louvres, or openable windows.
• The sources for natural ventilation are wind effect/pressure and
stack effect/pressure.
• Stack effect is an application of convected air currents.
• Cool air is encouraged to enter a building at low level.
• Here it is warmed by the occupancy, lighting, machinery
and/or purposely located heat emitters.
• A column of warm air rises within the building to discharge
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through vents at high level
 Mechanical Ventilation

• Profile - generally circular, square or rectangular but may be

oval. For efficient distribution of air, the uniformity of circular
ducting is preferred for the following reasons:
 less opportunity for turbulence
 less resistance to friction
 inherent rigidity
 lower heat losses or gains
 sound transfer generally less
 less potential for air leakage
• Where space is restricted under floors or in suspended ceilings,
rectangular ducting of high aspect ratio may be required for
practical reasons (aspect ratio and conversion from circular to
square or rectangular equivalent size.
• Square or rectangular ducting direction changes are more
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 Ventilation
• Propeller fan - does not create much air pressure and has limited effect in
ductwork. Ideal for use at air openings in windows and walls.
• Axial flow fan - can develop high pressure and is used for moving air
through long sections of ductwork. The fan is integral with the run of
ducting and does not require a base.
• Bifurcated axial flow fan - used for moving hot gases, e.g. flue gases, and
greasy air from commercial cooker hoods.
• Centrifugal fan - can produce high pressure and has the capacity for large
volumes of air. Most suited to larger installations such as air conditioning
systems.
• Centrifugal fans - may have one or two inlets. Various forms of impeller can
be selected depending on the air condition. Variable impellers and pulley
ratios from the detached drive motor make this the most versatile of fans.

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Types of fans

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 Building Services System

Lighting
• Lighting can be divided into two types:
• natural lighting and artificial lighting

Factors that influence the brightness of the room

• Natural brightness
• Size, shape and position f windows
• Internal reflected
• External reflected

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 Lighting

• The daylight received inside a building can be expressed as

the ratio of the illumination at the working point indoors to
the total light available simultaneously outdoors.
• This can be expressed as a percentage and it is known as the
daylight factor.
• This daylight factor includes light from the sky component
(direct sunlight), external reflected components(light
received from exterior reflecting surfaces), internal reflected
component received from internal reflecting surfaces).

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 Lighting

Artificial Lighting
• This is electrically generated light which involves components and
switches.

Artificial light selection factors include:

• Quantity of light
• Quality of colour
• Level of glare
• Quality of focusing
• Electric usage
• Costing
• Physical properties
• Amount of natural lighting 35
 Lighting

There are three types of artificial lighting systems

• General lighting: provide uniform illumination across the
working plane
• Localised lighting: to give light irradiation required to work at
locations and minimal irradiation at other non-work locations
• Local lighting: the required irradiation only for a small work
area.

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Lighting

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 Lighting

Type of control
• Manual Switch
• Remote switch
• Timer switch
• Photo-electric cell switch

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 Building Services System

Acoustic
• The purpose of acoustic is to lower the noise level in a
reverberation or canal space.

Factors that affect acoustic

• Type of acoustic material
• Cost
• Density
• Fire proof
• Moisture resistance
• Aesthetic value

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 Acoustic
There are two forms of acoustic
• Porous absorber
• Plate porous absorber: if thick absorbent
material thinner than the wavelength of
sound
• Bulk porous absorber: if thick absorbent
material is thicker than the wavelength of
sound
• Cavity resonator: this is used in places that
require that noise is reduced to the barest
minimum.

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Mechanical systems, Electrical systems
and Building operation systems
These will be in a separate slides.
Indoor Air Quality, Sick Building
Syndrome, Sustainable Building Design
 Indoor air quality

• According to the WHO, Indoor air quality is defined as “the

physical and chemical nature of indoor air delivered to the
breathing zone of building occupants, which produces a
complete state of mental, physical and social well-being of
the occupants, and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity”

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 Factors that affect indoor air quality

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Air movement
• Respiratory products/ body odour
• Micro-organisms

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 Sick building syndrome(SBS)

• Irritation and itching of the eyes

• Nose and throat irritation
• Runny or congested nose
• Chest tightness
• Headaches
• Poor concentration
• Irritability

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 Polluting air substances

• There are several materials that may emit polluting substances

and these include
Modern office equipment such as computers, high capacity
photocopiers, laser printers
Synthetic building materials like formaldehyde emitting particle
boards, glues using organic solvents
A wide range of plastic materials
Chemical based cleaning agents
Source outside the building such as vehicle exhausts and
chimneys

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 Sustainable Building Design

• Energy supplied to building comes in several form. There is

solar energy, wind, nuclear, thermal, all of which can be
converted to electricity that can power our systems not
forgetting biogas that can be used for cooking and other
important functions

• The supply of energy to buildings can be done in several ways.

For example with hydro-electric power. The power is being
generated from the power house close to a source of water.
• Then this energy is converted by a generator to electricity, it is
then connected to transmission lines, to a step down
transformer, to a distribution line then another transformer
then to our various homes through a single phase connection,
through the wiring system, then finally to our sockets or
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 Sustainable Building Design

• In the case of solar energy, the heat generated from the sun
can directly warm our buildings when the rays are
absorbed.

• A solar panel can also be installed to convert solar energy

into electrical energy to be used in buildings.

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 Energy Efficient Buildings

• Energy efficient buildings are (new or renovated existing

buildings) can be defined as buildings that are designed to
provide a significant reduction of the energy need for
heating and cooling, independently of the energy and of
the equipment that will be chosen to heat or cool the
building

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 Elements to consider in constructing an
energy efficient building
Optimum Bio-climatic design Benefit at maximum from sun • Shape and orientation of
radiation building
• Shading/ wind protection
• Orientation and shape of
glazing

Performing insulating solution To reduce heat loss/heat gain • Good insulation of the
To ensure summer comfort environment e.g. floor, walls,
roofs, windows and doors
+ • Air tightness for windows,
Air tightness doors, roofs, etc.
+ Air quality: for fresh & healthy air, • Ventilation (double flow
Ventilation moisture management. variable.
• Ground heat exchanger.

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 Elements to consider in constructing an
energy efficient building
Equipment Optimized equipment with
good controls and estimation
Renewable energy Adapted to local condition
High efficiency gas boiler,
heat pump, solar collectors
for hot water etc.
Photo-voltaic cells, wind
power, biomass
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Building services integration
Building services installations helps a building to carry out
the functions for which it was built.
 Building Services Integration

• Installations range from essential supplies of water and

electricity, to the set of mechanisms, sensors and
technological elements that allow man to enjoy a welfare
impossible to have merely with physical elements., e.g.
(structure, enclosure) of traditionally understood
architecture
• Building services installations helps a building to carry out
the functions for which it was built.
•

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Electricity
Being without electric energy during a time reminds us how dependent we
have become on electricity and how difficult it is to imagine how we could
live without it

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 Electricity

The choice of wiring system for a particular installation depends

on technical factors and economic viability.

• 1.Durability: Type of wiring selected should conform to

standard specifications, so that it is durable i.e. without being
affected by the weather conditions, fumes etc.

• 2.Safety: The wiring must provide safety against leakage, shock

and fire hazards for the operating personnel.

• 3.Appearance: Electrical wiring should give an aesthetic

appeal to the interiors.
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 Electricity

• 4.Cost: It should not be too expensive.

• 5.Accessibility: The switches and plug points provided

should be easily accessible. There must be provision for
further extension of the wiring system, if necessary.

• 6.Maintenance Cost: The maintenance cost should be a

minimum

• 7.Mechanical safety: The wiring must be protected

against any mechanical damage

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Lighting
Lighting can be merely functional or ornamental both in
the interior or exterior of buildings

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 Lighting basics
 General Lighting -provides an area with overall illumination. Also
known as ambient lighting, general lighting radiates a comfortable
level of brightness, enabling one to see and walk about safely. It can
be accomplished with chandeliers, ceiling or wall-mounted fixtures,
recessed or track lights, and with lanterns outside your home.

 Task lighting -helps you perform specific tasks such as reading,

sewing, cooking, homework, hobbies, games, or balancing your
checkbook. It can be provided by recessed and track lighting,
pendant lighting, and portable lamps. Task lighting should be free of
distracting glare and shadows and should be bright enough to
prevent eyestrain.

 Accent Lighting- adds drama to a room by creating visual interest.

As part of a decorating scheme, it is used to spotlight paintings,
houseplants, sculpture, and other prized possessions, or to highlight
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the texture of a wall, drapery or outdoor landscaping.
Fire Protection
The prevention of fires in a building is of utmost concern to mankind
because the fire that heats is the fire that kills or destroy everything.

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 Fire Safety

• The prevention of fires in a building is of utmost concern to

mankind because the fire that heats is the fire that kills or
destroy everything.
• Fire protection is not only about the provision of fire fighting
appliances, but also the use of fire resistance materials, layout of
stair-case and emergency exits, evacuation routes, etc.
• Fire protection can be divided into two:
• Passives: measures directed to facilitate evacuation of the
building and ensure the containment of the fire inside an
enclosure until arrival of the fire service.
• Actives: installation of detection, different systems of alarms,
signs and extinction, fire hydrants cabinets, sprinklers etc. etc.

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 Fire Protection

• Zoning and fire stability in the formation of volumes and

structural frameworks
In building services integration, the protection of fire can be done
by choosing the right materials and arranging different fire areas
to simplify other solutions of fire protection.
For example: although the rules allows the increase of the area of
sector by placing sprinklers, it works out easier to place fire
resistant sliding doors with retainers at strategic points in order to
avoid excessive complexities of installations.

• Zoning depending on the building typology

• Drainage
• Staircase and evacuation routes
• Emergency lighting and signs
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• Car park ventilation
Water Management
Tap water is the final product of quite a rather complex
process of purification and sterilization in various stages

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 Water Management

• Plumbing and drainage installations are different but they are

united by an obvious concept: what goes into the building, has to
go out and the ways for this must be settled.
• Note that water is a finite resource and thus needs to be
managed efficiently.
• The installation of water dependent toilets in areas where there
is an abundance of water now employ the use of cisterns that
give the user more control on the amount of water used to flush
the toilet after use.
• In some areas, waste water is treated and re-used.

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 Building Services Drawing
Interpretation & Building Codes
Building Drawings and Building codes

• Assignment
• Ghana building codes part 9. this building code is on
building services. Read and make notes on it.
• CIBSE building energy code 1981. likewise, make notes on
this code. Stating what it entails and where it applies.

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