Winter Thermal Resilience of Lightweight and Ground-Coupled Mediumweight Buildings: An Experimental Study During Heating Outages

Marta Gortych () and Tadeusz Kuczyński
Additional contact information
Marta Gortych: Institute of Environmental Engineering, University of Zielona Góra, Prof. Z. Szafrana St. 15, 65-516 Zielona Góra, Poland
Tadeusz Kuczyński: Institute of Environmental Engineering, University of Zielona Góra, Prof. Z. Szafrana St. 15, 65-516 Zielona Góra, Poland

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 15, 1-19

Abstract: Thermal resilience is critical for building safety in cold climates during heating outages. This study presents full-scale experimental data from two residential buildings in Poland, tested during the winter of 2024–2025 under both typical and extreme outdoor conditions. The buildings—a lightweight timber-frame structure and a mediumweight masonry structure with ground coupling—were exposed to multi-day heating blackouts, and their thermal responses were monitored at a high temporal resolution. Several resilience indicators were used, including the resistance time (RT), degree of disruption (DoD), and hours of safety threshold (HST). Additionally, two time-based metrics—the time to threshold (T x ) and temperature at X-hours (T(t x ))—were introduced to improve classification in long-duration scenarios. The weighted unmet thermal performance (WUMTP) index was also implemented and validated using experimental data. The results show that thermal mass and ground coupling significantly improved passive resilience, enabling the mediumweight building to maintain temperatures above 15 °C for over 60 h without heating. This study provides new empirical evidence of passive survivability in blackout conditions and supports the development of time-sensitive assessment tools for cold climates. The findings may inform future updates to building codes and retrofit guidelines.

Keywords: thermal resilience; heating outages; passive survivability; thermal mass; ground coupling (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: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/15/4022/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/15/4022/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:15:p:4022-:d:1712091

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().