Use of concave integral blinds to reduce glare &help daylighting

Renee Shirey

Stantec

LEEDuser Premium Member

283 thumbs up

December 7, 2010

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Tristan Roberts

Representative

Vermont House of Representatives

LEEDuser Expert

7780 thumbs up

Wed, 12/08/2010 - 02:52

I have venetian blinds in my office and you can sort of turn them around so that they are basically configured as you describe. It definitely produces a nice effect with the light in terms of distributing the light without glare.There are also products designed to work exactly this way, and could help with IEQc8.1 depending on the compliance path.

Renee Shirey

Stantec

LEEDuser Premium Member

283 thumbs up

Wed, 12/08/2010 - 16:25

Hmmmmm - just realized I should clarify. They aren't venetial blinds on the project, they are just regular mini-blinds - so they are the narrow curved slats vs the venitians which would be wide and flat.

Tristan Roberts

Representative

Vermont House of Representatives

LEEDuser Expert

7780 thumbs up

Wed, 12/08/2010 - 16:27

Okay.... I want to make sure that if you have a question, that we've done our best to answer it... where do we stand?

Renee Shirey

Stantec

LEEDuser Premium Member

283 thumbs up

Wed, 12/08/2010 - 16:33

I was hoping someone had experience with actual calculated improvements, to help justify attempting the strategy. There is a minimal increase in price, but I don't want to do it unless we could prove the benefit. My gut says it would have some minor improvement in comfort, but I have no proof or time to get our engineers to run more analysis. Hopefully I'll get to further investigate it in a future project...

Allison Beer McKenzie

Architect, Director of Sustainability

SHP Leading Design

LEEDuser Expert

389 thumbs up

Wed, 12/08/2010 - 16:39

Renee- we have attempted this exact strategy. We have tried to demonstrate improvement in daylighting by using upside down mini blinds, but we did not have any luck with simulation software showing an improvement. In the end we went ahead and installed the blinds concave side up because we had anecdotal "evidence" that there would be a quality of light improvement, but we were never able to "prove" it or get credit for it in LEED. This has been a couple years, so perhaps newer daylight simulation software will do a better job, but I am not sure.