The preponderant number of multi-story buildings constructed in Denmark (Northern Europe) in the period between 1850-1930 were built with masonry walls incorporating wooden floor beams. Given the nature of this construction, it is supposed that significant energy savings could be achieved by simply insulating the facades of such buildings. To maintain the exterior appearance of the facade the only possible means of installing the required insulation is placing it on the interior of the wall. However, the installation of insulation on the interior of the wall assembly reduces the overall drying potential of the wall, and this in turn may lead to moisture problems at the beam ends embedded in the masonry, when the masonry facade is subjected to driving rain. This paper presents a method to investigate retrofit measures of interior insulated masonry walls having wooden floor beams based on Failure Mode and Effect Analysis combined with hygrothermal simulations. The method was first used to determine the potential for failure in retrofitted walls, their effects and causes, and thereafter, the expected hygrothermal performance of the retrofit measures were further investigated using both thermal and hygrothermal simulation software. The results show that the risk to incurring moisture problems at wooden beam ends can be resolve by not insulating that portion of the wall directly above and below the floor division.Additionally, this proposed retrofit measure would reduce the heat loss of the original wall structure by half.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.