English & Welsh Building Regulations Part L2 - Section 3 - Building Log Books
Since April 2002 it has been a requirement of the English and Welsh Building Regulations Approved Document L2 for the owner or occupier of a building to be provided with a Log-book upon completion of any works related to the energy consumption of the building. This may be a new building, the installation of new boiler plant or new windows. Subsequent amendments to the Building Regulations have strengthened the requirements.
The Log-book should provide details of the installed building services plant and controls, their method of operation and maintenance, and other details that collectively enable energy consumption to be monitored and controlled.
This information is to be provided in a summary form, suitable for every day use. The summary could draw on or refer to information available a part of other documentation, such as the Operation & Maintenance Manuals and Health & Safety Files.
The required information to be provided in the Log-book includes:-
A description of the building, its intended use and purpose and its design Philosophy.
Schedules of the floor areas by zone, type and environmental service
The location of the major plant and equipment, with simple schematics of the relevant systems i.e. ventilation, heating, cooling, power.
Schedules of the installed plant and equipment input and output power.
Descriptions of the operational and control strategies of the energy consuming services in the building such as the heating system.
Copies of commissioning reports confirming that the building systems have been satisfactorily commissioned.
Operational and maintenance instructions to enable the occupants to maintain the original building performance during subsequent occupation.
Schedules of the buildings energy meters and sub-meters for each fuel, location, identification, description and usage instructions. These should be related to design consumptions and compared with appropriate published benchmarks.
A design assessment should be provided of the building services systems carbon emissions related to comparable benchmarks such as the Energy Consumption Guide 19 “Energy use in offices" (ECON 19).
The air permeability of the building should be measured and a report appended.
CIBSE have produced a number of templates to meet these requirements. They are called TM31. These are available at http://www.cibse.co.uk.
Krisco are a small English company of technical authors that specialize in the production of Building Log Books to the CIBSE TM31 template to meet the requirements of Part L2 of the English and Welsh Building Regulations
Krisco obtain all relevant information from the architects, m&e consultants, builders and sub-contractors and produce Building Log Books to meet the requirements of Part L2 of the 2006 England and Wales Building Regulations.
This article makes use of the English & Welsh Building Regulations. Please refer to Approved Document Part L2 for full details of the requirements of these regulations. A copy of these is available at http://www.communities.gov.uk.
This article is produced by Tony Dolling, Director of Krisco Technical Publications Ltd.
