Daylight Access - Living Areas

BESS Daylight Access - Living Areas focuses on multi-unit developments (Apartments, aged care, hotels). The objective is to enhance amenity and energy efficiency through thoughtful natural light design. Points are allocated as per the following requirements.

"Points are awarded where at least 80% of the total number of living areas achieve a daylight factor greater than 1% to 90% of the floor area of each living area, including kitchens. Additional points are awarded where 100% of dwellings comply. This can be demonstrated by using the in-built BESS daylight calculator or by alternative daylight modelling where the alternative methodology is accepted by Council."

What is Daylight Factor in BESS

Daylight factor definitions are highly variable. Within BESS, they are defined as:

"A measure of indoor brightness of diffuse daylight within a space. It is defined as the ratio of the luminance of a point in a building to the unobstructed outdoor illuminance under the same sky conditions. It is usually measured at the level of the horizontal work plane."

In simpler terms, the daylight factor measures how much natural light is available inside a building. It is calculated by taking the ratio of light inside a building to the amount outside under the same sky conditions. The higher the daylight factor, the brighter the space will be.

Modelling Daylight Access - Living Areas in Speckel

To meet the requirements of Daylight Access - Living Areas, the Purpose of the Space must be defined within the model for that Space to be selected for assessment. In this case, the 'Living Spaces' must be defined with a Purpose. Once defined, the Daylight form is used to nominate the Metric, Grid, Surface and Simulation Settings before running a simulation. For the Metric, inputs must be configured as per the requirements of Daylight Access - Living Areas, stated above.

When running a simulation where multiple Purposes are required, such as Daylight Access to living Areas and bedrooms, they can either be run in the same simulation by adding multiple objectives or run separately.

Outputs on Speckel

Once a Daylight Access - Living Areas simulation has been undertaken, results are available in your browser and a report detailing assumptions used and results achieved.

Looking for a quick tutorial? Check out BESS Daylight Access.