Estimation of the Heat Loss Coefficient of Two Occupied Residential Buildings through an Average Method

Irati Uriarte, Aitor Erkoreka, Pablo Eguia, Enrique Granada and Koldo Martin-Escudero
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Irati Uriarte: ENEDI Research Group, Department of Energy Engineering, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Plaza Torres Quevedo 1, 48013 Bilbao, Spain
Aitor Erkoreka: ENEDI Research Group, Department of Energy Engineering, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Plaza Torres Quevedo 1, 48013 Bilbao, Spain
Pablo Eguia: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Heat Engines and Fluid Mechanics, School of Industrial Engineering, University of Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain
Enrique Granada: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Heat Engines and Fluid Mechanics, School of Industrial Engineering, University of Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain
Koldo Martin-Escudero: ENEDI Research Group, Department of Energy Engineering, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Plaza Torres Quevedo 1, 48013 Bilbao, Spain

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-17

Abstract: The existing performance gap between the design and the real energy consumption of a building could have three main origins: the occupants’ behaviour, the performance of the energy systems and the performance of the building envelope. Through the estimation of the in-use Heat Loss Coefficient (HLC), it is possible to characterise the building’s envelope energy performance under occupied conditions. In this research, the estimation of the HLC of two individual residential buildings located in Gainsborough and Loughborough (UK) was carried out using an average method. This average method was developed and successfully tested in previous research for an occupied four-story office building with very different characteristics to individual residential buildings. Furthermore, one of the analysed residential buildings is a new, well-insulated building, while the other represents the old, poorly insulated semidetached residential building typology. Thus, the monitored data provided were filtered in order to apply the abovementioned average method. Even without fulfilling all the average method requirements for these two residential buildings, the method provides reliable HLC values for both residential buildings. For the house in Gainsborough, the best estimated HLC value was 60.2 W/K, while the best approach for Loughborough was 366.6 W/K. Thus, despite the uncertainty sources found during the analysis, the method seems promising for its application to residential buildings.

Keywords: heat loss coefficient; average method; building envelope’s in-use energy performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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