Tektroniks provide the monitoring system used to monitor the environmental performance of the Zero Carbon House in Birmingham.  The house was designed and developed by its owner, architect John Christophers, to meet the stringent requirements of Level 6 of the UK Code for Sustainable Homes.  The house started its life as a Victorian 2 bedroom house but has been transformed into an exceptionally eco friendly 4 bedroom family home.

The house has already received many awards and plaudits, however part of the project involves a 2 year instrumental monitoring and post-occupancy evaluation process.  Funds for the instrumental monitoring and evaluation were secured by Birmingham City University's Centre for Low Carbon Research, leading the monitoring & evaluation process is Dr Lubo Jankovic, BSc, PhD, FIAP, CEng, MCIBSE.

The Brief

Dr Jankovic wants a monitoring system that can be easily installed into the existing house structure and not have a negative impact on the buildings performance.  The desired system needs to be; accurate, robust, reliable, be able to monitor a vast array of factors, be expandable to allow for future monitoring requirements and give remote access to data for external review.  The system also needed to be standalone without the requirement for any additional onsite hardware (dedicated PC) or additional software.

The desired monitoring system would need to be able to monitor a wide range of indicators including; the temperature of each room in the house, the temperature of the flow and return for the wood burning stove also the flow rate, the temperature for the solar thermal flow and return also the flow rate, the relative humidity and Co2 levels in the kitchen, the electrical consumption of the mechanical ventilation heat recovery system, the electrical consumption of the immersion heater, the total amount of electricity generated by the house and also the total electricity used by the house imported from the national grid.  Another parameter that will need to be added to the system will be from a solarimeter to allow for monitoring the solar collector array plane radiation.

Dr Jankovic and his team also want to be able to access the information collected on site remotely to review and download for use in their research, therefore the system must have network connectivity and its own onboard memory for storage of recorded data.

Tektroniks Recommendation

Tektroniks recommendation is their Wireless DATAcentre Monitoring System to cover Dr Jankovic’s needs.  The DATAcentre is the chosen product due to its ability to receive data from a large number of different sensor types, be expandable to allow for additional sensors to be added in the future and for its ability to be installed without needing to disturb the structure of the building.

The fact that the DATAcentre is a totally standalone system that does not need any additional PC hardware or software were also important factors that were considered.  Its ability to be able to store data internal for up to 10 years with only an external network connection needed to be able to access the data using a standard internet browser also suits Dr Jankovic’s requirements.

Tektroniks recommends the following base station and sensors;

·         M02LCMU101 – Wireless DATAcentre Base Station

·         M02WS101 – Wireless Temperature Sensors for measuring room temperatures

·         M02WS104 – Wireless Temperature Sensor with External Probe for measuring outside ambient

·         M02WS109 – Wireless Humidity Senor for the kitchen

·         M23-MGS321 – Wireless Co2 Sensor for the kitchen

·         M02WS110 – Wireless Pulse Counting Sensors for use with the meters for measuring energy usage and flow rates

·         M02WS112 – Wireless Temperature Sensor -100 to +200 degC for measuring the flow and return temperatures of the wood burning stove

·         M02WS105 – Wireless Temperature Sensor -45 to +100 degC for measuring the solar thermal flow and return

·         M02WS108 – Wireless Sensor 4-20mA for receiving data from the solarimeter

Dr Jankovic decided that all round Tektroniks DATAcentre offered a system that would meet his technical requirements, have the ability to be expandable to meet his future needs and give his team the remote access they needed to get data from the system.

The fact that the DATAcentre offered him a value for money system that could be easily installed into the existing building were also high on the DATAcentres plus points.  After careful consideration the DATAcentre was therefore chosen.

Since the system has been installed, Dr Jankovic has been using the data collected by the DATAcentre to review the performance of the building and to present his finding at many high profile events.  To find out more about Dr Jankovic and his studies of the Zero Carbon House please click on the links below

www.sciencecapital.co.uk/lubo-jankovic/

www.biad.bcu.ac.uk/research/site/pages/clcr.php

To find out how Tektroniks Wireless Monitoring Systems can help you click here.