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Using plants in building walls is a bioclimatic strategy to obtain savings in building energy consumption, between other important benefits of aesthetic, psychological and economic origins. The plant, as a living component of the facade, responses to the environment conditions in a very complicated way. The simulation of this response is not straightforward and some simplifications are needed in order to include it as a building component. The aim of this paper is to present two alternative simplified models to simulate a green wall with EnergyPlus. A discussion about why the green roof model cannot be used in a vertical green façade is also included. Both models are used to simulate a prototype with a green façade. Inside and outside glass temperatures, plant foliage temperature, and window heat gain and losses are calculated. The results are discussed and recommendations for simulating green façades are done.

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There is a wide variety of thermal analyses that can be used to characterize the thermal behavior of a wall under certain outdoor conditions. The selection of a particular wall configuration for a building project involves not only the outdoor climate, but also the whole building characteristics, orientation, percentage of glazed areas, occupation periods, lifestyles, etc. In this paper we apply common available methods for wall thermal analysis to two particular wall types, a massive brick wall and an insulated brick wall, in order to compare the information given by each method and to evaluate how these methods can help in the selection of a certain type of wall. The studied methods include the estimation of the wall time lag and decrement factor, the harmonically heated slab model, the Athanassouli's method, and numerical simulations. The study was performed for the walls of a residence for university students and it was built in La Pampa (Argentina). Once the building was finished, the transient thermal behavior of two walls was monitored during one summer week. The experimental results are presented and the fitting with the thermal behavior predicted by each method is discussed. The thermal comfort indicators PMV (predicted mean vote) and PPD (predicted percentage of dissatisfied) were calculated for two flats, at ground floor and first floor respectively.