Comparative Analysis of Overheating Risk for Typical Dwellings and Passivhaus in the UK

Abstract

There is growing concern that airtight and well-insulated buildings designed to limit heat loss in temperate and cold climates could unintentionally elevate the risk of overheating in summers. Existing literature primarily uses dynamic simulation to investigate this problem due to the difficulty of obtaining large-scale in-performance data. To address this gap, we undertake a meta-analysis of large-scale indoor air temperature data for 195 UK dwellings, as a study of performance in a temperate climate. Of these, 113 are baseline (i.e., typical existing dwellings) and the rest designed to the high-performance Passivhaus standard. Using both Passivhaus and the well-known CIBSE TM59 overheating standards, this study found that there were few overheated cases for any building type. However, the average summer nighttime temperature of Passivhaus bedrooms was 1.6 °C higher than baseline, with 20 out of 31 measured bedrooms exceeding the overheating criterion, and the average overheating hours constituting approximately 19% of the total summertime observation period. These findings suggest that bedrooms in highly insulated dwellings may pose an overheating risk although whole-dwelling overheating risk is low.