Housing refurbishment: environmental potential. Upgrade of the envelope of three housing typologies in Mendoza, Argentina.

GANEM, CAROLINA; COCH, HELENA; ESTEVES, ALFREDO

Proceedings of the IX World Renewable Energy Congress

Elsevier Ltd

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2006; p. 1 - 6

In single family houses the impact in the interior thermal behaviour of the envelope’s permeability is high. This fact presents a potential opportunity to reduce non-renewable energy consumption in houses through the correct refurbishment of their envelope. In the city of Mendoza, Argentina (32º40’SL, 68º51’WL, 750 masl, Annual heating DD (base 18°C): 1384 °C day/year) the envelope must be flexible and adaptable to accomplish the passive goal in an annual and daily challenging continental temperate climate. With the objective to reach comfort in winter by non-energetic means the three most representative single-family housing typologies in this city have been analysed. The pursued methodology started with the theoretical evaluation of the environmental refurbishment potential by applying energy saving and passive solar gain strategies. A sequential “two-steps” application of the proposal of refurbishment is considered and the relative impact of each step is analysed. Subsequently, on-site temperature measurements on a 15’ basis were performed on three existing case studies, each representing one typology. This experimental data validated thermal simulation models developed with the programme SIMEDIF (INENCO-UNSa). The developed theoretical refurbishment options were then simulated in order to obtain a more acurrate approximation of the expectable comfort benefits by environmentally upgrading the envelope.