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Sustainably Retrofitting Commercial Buildings

Sustainable Built Environments Senior Capstone Project / This capstone aims to study what types of sustainable renovation improvements would work best on older commercial buildings in Tucson. The issue being, what different types of upgrades are compatible with the types of buildings and environment in the Tucson area? This was determined with researching and comparing the data from three older buildings, which have undergone renovations and also received LEED certification. The results were significant in that the buildings studied had many similar improvements such as, installing high efficiency HVAC, upgrading insulation, using natural lighting to reduce artificial along with the usage of LED and or CFL bulbs. Low flow water fixtures were also used in all buildings to reduce water usage. The differences were the building in Phoenix also installed solar panels, along with a solar chimney for cooling, as the other two did not due to their locations in Illinois and Michigan. When these renovations were analyzed, many could be utilized in the Tucson environment. However, depending on the type of structure being renovated, the installation of HVAC, and the need for insulation could vary, due to some older buildings being brick or adobe.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/621605
Date January 2016
CreatorsWardell, Charles Cole
ContributorsCollege of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, Chalfoun, Nader, Iuliano, Joey
PublisherThe University of Arizona.
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
RightsCopyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, and the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

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