Evaluation of the thermal performance of an industrialised housing construction system in a warm-temperate climate: Morelia, Mexico

Abstract

ReuseThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can't change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Key wordsPerformance evaluation, Thermal comfort, Thermal adaptation, Housing design, Industrialised building systems, Mexico Highlights¥ The thermal performance of a low-cost concrete house building system is analysed. ¥ Monitoring and a field survey are used to assess environmental performance. ¥ Thermal adaptation is easier for subjects in the cool season than the warm season. ¥ Poor performance is blamed on a ubiquitous design unsuited to the local climate. AbstractThis paper examines the performance of a case study of low-income housing situated in a warm-temperate climate (Morelia, Mexico). It represents the first comprehensive evaluation of thermal comfort in a widely used concrete formwork construction system in that country.The study was conducted in two seasons, determined by climatic analysis identifying the months that presented the most extreme conditions during the year. Indoor thermal conditions were monitored and are compared with the adaptive comfort temperature and comfort zone derived from existing standards.A thermal comfort field survey was also conducted, including the distribution of questionnaires in both seasons. The findings are compared with monitored data to assess the overall thermal performance of the housing typology.The results reveal poor thermal performance with houses falling significantly outside the thermal comfort boundaries in both periods due to a number of factors, including the properties of the building envelope, the impact of solar radiation, the number of occupants and their behavior. The results indicate that it is easier for subjects to adapt to cooler rather than warmer conditions. These findings expand existing knowledge of the performance of this concrete formwork system in Mexico as well as other industrialised building systems in similar climates. It demonstrates the urgency of designing viable solutions according to local climate, and questions the use of identical housing prototypes across different climatic regions.

Indoor Environmental Quality in Latin American Buildings: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Surveys, as a subjective measuring tool, were mainly based on questionnaires in which the evaluation of different factors and general satisfaction levels were collected directly from the respondents' opinions. In the selected corpus, it was possible to find thermal satisfaction surveys [38,43,44,47,51,54,55,66,72,80,85,86,90,100,114,[117][118][119]122,123,125] or [104], visual satisfaction [46,102,105,122] or [119], acoustic satisfaction, [44,103,122] humidity sensation [72,78], and air quality [32,33,91]. In general, there were five set satisfaction levels as well as preference levels.…”

“…In general, there were five set satisfaction levels as well as preference levels. For example, in thermal satisfaction [38,43,51,114,119], respondents were asked if they preferred a colder or warmer environment.…”

“…Temperature measuring aims to quantify the impact of (1) different building envelope solutions [38,79], roofing [37] or windows [49]; (2) climate variations of adaptive comfort [35,129]; (3) architectural [54] or bioclimatic [81] design; and (4) comfort perception and hygrothermal comfort local regulations [55,63].…”

Economic feasibility of passive strate gies for energy efficient envelopes of mass-built housing in hot-dry climate

“…Mass-built housing is generally designed without any climatic consideration [7,8,9,10], and therefore, present long-lasting problems for the end user, which span from high indoor temperatures, well outside the thermal comfort range, to negative effects on indoor air quality, and even economic vulnerability, due to the user's need to retrofit their home to comply with adequate living standards.…”

Aluminum formwork system: loss and productivity

“…The system is increasingly used since it is considered a technology capable of rapid construction, good quality, durable and low cost for mass housing (Ganar and Patil, 2015). Several other countries also endorse the use of AFS, as in the case of countries in South America and Sri Lanka (Botero and Agudelo, 2011; Becerra-Santacruz and Lawrence, 2016; Jayasinghe and Fernando, 2017). In Brazil, the AFS is used by at least 52 percent in construction works of the federal government’s MCMV Program, which aims to facilitate the acquisition of houses for Brazilian families and reduce the housing deficit (Santos, 2016).…”