Thermal Comfort Assessment during Winter Season: A Case Study on Portuguese Public Social Housing

Pedro I. Brandão and João C. G. Lanzinha
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Pedro I. Brandão: C–MADE—Centre of Materials and Building Technologies, LABSED, Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Beira Interior (UBI), 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal
João C. G. Lanzinha: C–MADE—Centre of Materials and Building Technologies, LABSED, Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Beira Interior (UBI), 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 19, 1-25

Abstract: Many public social housing building stocks were constructed before the introduction of national thermal regulations, and, as a result, in some situations, energy poverty conditioning during severe winter seasons results in little to no heating habits involving active systems in order to improve building thermal performances. Besides rigorous summer seasons, climate change predictions also indicate rigorous winter seasons will occur that will prevail in some Iberia Peninsula locations, worsening this scenario for this Southern European region. Among others, understanding the extension of discomfort in social housing buildings during heating seasons is therefore essential so as to perceive the suitability of the building stock to deal with present and future climate scenarios. Thus, this article presents a thermal comfort assessment during a winter season period applied to two social housing dwellings located in Covilhã, Portugal, inhabited by elderly residents, under realistic heating habits. An experimental campaign was performed and the results show that discomfort was found to be extremely significant for the majority of the occupied time. Passive means alone and resident heating habits were not enough to achieve proper indoor thermal and humidity conditions, resulting in important losses of well-being to the risk group of the elderly.

Keywords: energy poverty; social housing; winter season; building thermal performance; comfort (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: 2021
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