37º IAHS World Congress on Housing: - Universidad de Cantabria

XXXVII <strong>IAHS</strong><strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> on HousingOctober 26 – 29, 2010, Santander, SpainCODE: 259SUSTAINABLE HERITAGE: ANALYSIS OF BUILDING’STHERMAL BEHAVIOURAna Ferreira Ramos 1 , J.A.R. Mendes da Silva 21 Superior School of TechnologyPolytechnic Institute of Castelo Brancoana_ramos@ipcb.pt2 Faculty of Science and TechnologyUniversity of Coimbraraimundo@dec.uc.ptKey words: sustainable construction, rehabilitation process, thermal behaviour, environmental loadsAbstractThe energy consumption of buildings has presented a steady growth in face of the globalenergy consumption. This fact is related to a variety of factors, including the increaseddemand for comfort by the inhabitants, the low quality of construction of buildings and theirinadequacy to the climatic and environmental context in which they are included. Reversingthis tendency includes the necessary intervention in the built environment, promoting theattainment of comfort through interventions that respect the principles of sustainability inconstruction, namely in resource consumption over the building’s life cycle.Energy rehabilitation can be accomplished by enhancing the envelope’s thermal protectionusing strategies in terms of i) strengthening insulation in the opaque envelope; ii)strengthening insulation of the glazing and iii) control of solar gains. The use of passive solarsystems and the improvement of energy systems are other approaches for improving thethermal performance of dwellings.This study examines the constructive characteristics and the pathologies found inapproximately 700 buildings located in Coimbra’s downtown (“Baixa”), the historic sector ofthe city. From this analysis it was possible to assess the present-day performance of thesebuildings, attending to the existing code and the application of DesignBuilder software, and todefine the desired levels of performance resulting from rehabilitation procedures. Thedefinition of these levels allows the superintendence of the process of intervention, taking intoaccount the solutions to adopt with regard to the principles of sustainability.37º <strong>IAHS</strong> <strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> On Housing Science 149