by Brianna Crandall — December 1, 2010—The U.K.’s BRE has released a new version of the Simplified Building Energy Model (SBEM) calculation tool, with its interface, as iSBEM v4.1.a. It is available to download, free of charge, from the BRE Web site.
This version fully implements all the changes needed to allow the SBEM tool to be used to show compliance for buildings other than dwellings with the 2010 edition of Part L of Building Regulations in England and Wales, with Building Standards Section 6 in Scotland, and with Building Bye-laws for the States of Jersey.
Full details of the changes are provided on the Web site, and include:
- The ability to generate an Approved Document Checklist without a “For illustration” watermark
- A new form on which assessors can record the specification of key features of a building, for submission to Building Control Bodies (as required by ADL2A)
- Improvements to the treatment of intermittency in heating and cooling demand, in line with changes to ISO standards. This has little effect on Building Regulations compliance, but does make the absolute energy use align more closely with results from dynamic simulation tools.
- A new form on which assessors can record the specification of key features of a building, for submission to Building Control Bodies (as required by ADL2A)
BRE intends to release very shortly a revised version of iSBEM v3.5, which will continue to be used for buildings being built to 2006 regulations and, until April 2011, for all EPCs.
