With the recent need to decrease energy use and promote indoor thermal comfort in overheating conditions, attention has been drawn to the passive cooling function of courtyards. This paper aims to determine the effect of proportions and orientations of courtyards on the indoor thermal performance of traditional houses in a warm, humid region so that this could guide further improvement and reinterpretation of this building type. The results of this parametric study were obtained through computer simulations of different cases with the aim to determine the influence of orientation, courtyard size and proportions on the indoor thermal energy balance and thermal comfort of a traditional building in a warm-humid region. Rather than promote passive cooling in the building, the findings suggest that the courtyard greatly increases solar heat gain, raising the temperature during the day. Higher solar heat gains and ventilation rates were observed in the courtyard cases with greater width and length. Nevertheless, this does not cause important differences in the average operative temperature of the entire building between the cases. As for orientation, lower heat gains were obtained in courtyards with the long axis-oriented east to west. Regardless of the cases, the study finally emphasizes the importance of the inhabitants controlling the opening of windows in the enclosed rooms since this could decrease the temperature by 1.1 °C from night to the early morning (23.00 hrs to 11.00hrs) and thus influence its thermal comfort. Conversely, opening the windows outside that time-lapse could cause an increase in temperature and more hours above the upper comfort limit.
Buildings and the construction sector are responsible for 36% of the final energy use as well as 39% of carbon emissions, while the residential sector accounted for 22% of total energy consumption and 17% of carbon emissions. Therefore, housing requires measures which reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions without affecting the living conditions of its occupants. In Mexico, the most commonly used construction systems in mass housing are concrete block walls and concrete slabs, these systems adversely affect comfort conditions and increase energy consumption especially in regions with a hot arid climate, such as Mexicali, in Mexico's northwest region. The objective is to determine the thermal behavior and energy performance of three environmental adaptation strategies applied in the building envelope: thermal insulation, thermal mass, and air cavity walls. A commercial prototype of mass housing was considered as a benchmark case, with concrete block walls and a concrete beam and expanded polystyrene composite roof. The building energy simulation was carried out with the Design Builder ® software for the summer period, where building performance was evaluated with passive design strategies (simulation scenarios include variations in thickness and position of materials that make up the layers in the building components) against a benchmark case (without strategies), the corresponding thermal transmittance values (U-value) were also estimated. The results show differences in surface temperature, cooling demand and operative temperature inside the house; energysaving potential is shown, which contributes to carbon emissions reduction and thus aids in climate change mitigation.
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