Appropriate energy efficient building envelope technologies for social housing in the Irish climate
Extensive dynamic thermal simulation parametric analyses have been undertaken of energy efficient fabric alterations to social housing in Northern Ireland culminating in priorities for deployment. Five ȁ8basecaseȁ9 simulation models were used to represent the predominant characteristics of the existing social housing stock. The majority of technologies studied provided annual space-heating energy savings of more than 10%. The variation of energy savings and economic performance across the basecases highlights the value of a dwelling specific approach to selecting energy efficient building envelope technology solutions for energy rehabilitation programmes. The paper further outlines a framework for prioritising appropriate energy efficient building envelope technological solutions for a large regional building stock, i.e. existing social housing stock in Northern Ireland, highlighting influential parameters. An energy efficient building envelope inter-technology ranking approach provides a method of comparison across the various different dwellings in the regional housing stock. Airtightness ranked consistently highest across the dwellings studied with some solar technologies performing better than more technologically mature solutions such as insulation.
Simulation studies on small rural residential houses using sustainable building materials for thermal comfort – case comparison
ABSTRACT Energy performance of residential housing plays an important role in sustainable development of the building sector. Sustainable building design is the application of sustainability to the built environment and it takes into account the economic, social and ecological impact of buildings on their surroundings. As air conditioning systems are not costwise affordable to the occupants of rural residential buildings, it is essential to take care of their thermal comfort by other means. Natural ventilation is preferred over mechanical and is a sustainable building technology that can provide a good indoor environment and save energy. The walls release the absorbed heat from the environment into the interiors of buildings which causes discomfort to the inhabitants. It is essential to reduce or eliminate the heat in the interior spaces while constructing the walls of residential buildings. Hence the objective of this paper is to compare the sustainable building materials for wall, the conventional brick and stabilized mud block towards the thermal energy flow into the building using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. CFD software Fluent was used to create a virtual model of the building interior and simulate air flow, temperature profile and humidity which are directly related to thermal comfort, before the actual construction can be done. It was observed from this study that stabilized mud block-walled construction will minimize heat conductivity from the environment in to the interior of houses and make buildings self cooling, which helps to achieve a considerable level of thermal comfort in rural residences having no power consuming devices for comfort.
Availability of monitored hourly building performance data for validating dynamic thermal models of buildings
As part of the SERC/BRE sponsored exercise to develop tools for validating dynamic thermal models, Leicester Polytechnic undertook a review and evaluation of monitored structures to identify data sets suitable as the basis for empirical validation tools. Over 580 monitored buildings located throughout the world were classified and assessed; all had produced hourly building performance data and had associated weather data. Data from only 18 structures, located at six sites in Europe and the USA, were deemed to be of high enough quality that they could be used for validating a wide range of complex dynamic and simpler thermal models. This Note gives an overview of the evaluation procedure, the types of data available and the major conclusions of the research.