The Effects of Roof and Wall Insulation on the Energy Costs of Low Income Housing in Mexico

Lucero-Álvarez, Jorge; Rodríguez-Muñoz, Norma A.; Martín-Domínguez, Ignacio R.

doi:10.3390/su8070590

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(25 reference statements)

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“…For example, it has been estimated that TI is cost-effective in cities with high heating needs such as Chihuahua, Toluca, and Pachuca. 39…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of solar reflectance, infrared emissivity, and thermal insulation of roofs on the annual energy consumption of single-family households in México

Lucero-Álvarez

Martín-Domínguez

2017

Indoor and Built Environment

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Thermal building simulations were carried out for the climate conditions of 20 cities in México. We analyse the effects on energy consumption of variations in solar reflectance (SR), infrared emissivity (IE), and thermal insulation (TI) of a roof’s exterior surface. We quantify the maximum potential reduction in air conditioning annual electricity consumption and the most appropriate combination of optical properties to achieve this in every locality. We systematically varied the SR, IE, and TI of the exposed rooftop of a reference building. TI has the greatest energy-saving benefits when the optical properties of the roof are inadequate. The largest effects of SR and IE on energy consumption occur in countries with temperate climate dominated by energy requirements for cooling. In México, these cities are located in thermal zones 1 and 2, and it is within these zones that cool roof standards are recommended.

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“…For example, it has been estimated that TI is cost-effective in cities with high heating needs such as Chihuahua, Toluca, and Pachuca. 39…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of solar reflectance, infrared emissivity, and thermal insulation of roofs on the annual energy consumption of single-family households in México

Lucero-Álvarez

Martín-Domínguez

2017

Indoor and Built Environment

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“…Both the block wall type and insulated walls adversely affect the outdoor thermal environment. Currently, buildings with highly insulated sandwich walls are becoming increasingly popular, because they lower the energy consumption and increase the thermal comfort [59,60]. Moreover, the popularity of buildings with insulated sandwich walls is very reasonable because they are light, and the construction process is fast [61]; however, the use of this kind material has the potential to exacerbate the HII.…”

Section: Effect Of Building Thermal Behaviour On Air Temperature and mentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterising thermal behaviour of buildings and its effect on urban heat island in tropical areas

Wonorahardjo

Sutjahja

Mardiyati

et al. 2019

Int J Energy Environ Eng

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The heat island phenomenon in major cities is partly due to the excessive use of concrete and brick, which causes many problems regarding thermal comfort and energy expenditure. The thermal behaviour of the envelope wall material depends on its density, heat capacity, and thermal conductivity, and its effect on the heat island intensity (HII) is reported in this paper. Experiments and simulations were carried out on the four most popular building materials: brick, aerated concrete, wood with glass-wool insulation, and glass fibre-reinforced concrete with glass-wool insulation, with each material having a dimension of 1 m × 1 m. Experiments to analyse the thermal behaviour of the wall materials were performed by exposing each material to heat radiation from 2 × 1000 W halogen lamps for 4 h, followed by 4 h of cooling. The HII simulations were carried out in a simple urban kampong in a tropical area using Energy2D software. Heat flow analyses confirmed the thermal behaviour of the four walls, which can be categorised into two types: heat storage of block wall (BW) type and heat flow inhibition of insulated sandwich wall (ISW) type. The BW type showed 0.32 °C higher indoor air temperature than the ISW type, while the HII simulation showed ISW to be 0.74 °C higher than BW; however, both types increase the intensity and need mitigation treatment. The results of this study are important for the technological approach for dealing with local warming to lower the energy expenditure of poor people in an urban area. Keywords Urban heat island • Thermal behaviour • Block wall type • Insulated sandwich wall • Urban kampong List of symbols ρ Density c Specific heat κ Thermal conductivity avg Average density c avg Average specific heat avg Average thermal conductivity T so Outer surface temperature T si Inner surface temperature T m1 Temperature of the core wall at a depth of 2.5 cm T m2 Temperature of the core wall at a depth of 7.5 cm T m3 Temperature of the core wall at a depth of 12.5 cm P so Heat flow at outer surface P m1 Heat flow at a depth of 2.5 cm P m2 Heat flow at a depth of 7.5 cm P m3 Heat flow at a depth of 12.5 cm P si Heat flow at inner surface T ao Outdoor air temperature T ai Indoor air temperature T ac Outdoor air temperature above the canopy layer

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“…The baseline building energy performance has been calibrated based on electricity demand values obtained from several regional studies [90,91]. As a pre-processing step, the ExRET-Opt optimisation mode has been used to reduce the difference between the model's monthly energy use and the empirilcal data.…”

Section: Baseline Thermal Performance: Calibrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermodynamic and thermal comfort optimisation of a coastal social house considering the influence of the thermal breeze

Kerdan

Gálvez

Sousa

et al. 2019

Building and Environment

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Tropical coastal areas are characterised by high levels of wind and solar resources with large potentials to be utilised for low-energy building design. This paper presents a multi-objective optimisation framework capable of evaluating cost-efficient and low-exergy coastal building designs considering the influence of the thermal breeze. An integrated dynamic simulation tool has been enhanced to consider the impacts of the sea-land breeze effect, aiming at potentiating natural cross-ventilation to improve occupant's thermal comfort and reduce cooling energy demand. Furthermore, the technological database considers a wide range of active and passive energy conservation measures. As a case study, a two-storey/two-flat detached social house located in the North-Pacific coast of Mexico has been investigated. The optimisation problem has considered the minimisation of: i. annual exergy consumption, ii. life cycle cost, and iii. thermal discomfort. Optimisation results have shown that adequate building orientation and window opening control to optimise the effects of the thermal breeze, combined with other passive and active strategies such as solar shading devices, an improved envelope's physical characteristics, and solar assisted air source heat pumps have provided the best performance under a limited budget. Compared to the baseline design, the closest to utopia design has increased thermal comfort by 93.8% and reduced exergy consumption by 10.3% whilst increasing the life cycle cost over the next 50 years by 18.5% (from US$39,864 to US$47,246). The importance of renewable generation incentives is further discussed as a counter effect measure for capital cost increase as well as unlocking currently high-cost low-exergy technologies.

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The Effects of Roof and Wall Insulation on the Energy Costs of Low Income Housing in Mexico

Cited by 25 publications

References 26 publications

The effect of solar reflectance, infrared emissivity, and thermal insulation of roofs on the annual energy consumption of single-family households in México

The effect of solar reflectance, infrared emissivity, and thermal insulation of roofs on the annual energy consumption of single-family households in México

Characterising thermal behaviour of buildings and its effect on urban heat island in tropical areas

Thermodynamic and thermal comfort optimisation of a coastal social house considering the influence of the thermal breeze

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