Easy to implement ventilated sunspace for energy retrofit of condominium buildings with balconies

Giulio Allesina, Chiara Ferrari, Alberto Muscio and Simone Pedrazzi

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 141, issue C, 541-548

Abstract: Energy retrofit of the facade of condominium buildings may be a difficult task because thermal bridges such as those due to balconies, common elements in the architecture of many countries, are often arduous to correct by added insulation due to several constraints. An alternative retrofit approach is therefore analyzed, easy to implement and relatively inexpensive. It consists in changing a balcony into a ventilated sunspace during the cold season, exploiting solar gains to compensate heat loss. More specifically, transparent plastic roll-up sheets are installed along the balcony perimeter, removable in the hot season, to enclose the volume between two superposed balcony slabs. The obtained sunspace is then used as a pre-heating chamber for a single-flow ventilation system that ensures the air changes required indoors. Heat gain to the indoor environment can thus be increased with respect to a simpler sunspace without ventilation, and possibly modulated along the day by proper control of the flow rate.

Keywords: Balcony; Energy retrofit; Greenhouse; Solar gain; Sunspace; Ventilation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148119305208
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:141:y:2019:i:c:p:541-548

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.04.037

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().