Making Daylighting Work: Applying Cx to Improve the Design and Implementation Process

For ages daylighting has been a primary source of daytime light for human activities within buildings.

By Joseph J. Deringer, The Deringer Group Inc., and Prasad Vaidya, The Weidt Group Inc. February 15, 2008

For ages daylighting has been a primary source of daytime light for human activities within buildings. During the 20th century, with the widespread use of electric lighting, daylighting assumed a more supplemental role with electric lighting levels being reduced or turned off when adequate daylight is present via the use of local or central manual controls. A large body of very effective buildings has been produced using such techniques. Some buildings are exquisite in their effectiveness and visual quality. Then in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as a result of rapid advances in low-cost digital controls, increasingly sophisticated automatic controls are being installed instead of manual controls.

This article was originally published in the proceedings of the 2007 National Conference on Building Commissioning (NCBC). Click here to read the full paper.

Readers are encouraged to consider attending NCBC 2008 in Newport Beach, Calif., www.peci.org/ncbc