From Construction to Operation: Achieving Indoor Thermal Comfort via Altering External Walls Specifications in Egypt

Abstract

The objective of this research is to study the effect of using different material specifications for the external walls on the cost of the energy consumption for achieving internal thermal comfort. We refer to this as operation running cost, which in turn is compared to initial construction cost for each type of the used external walls. In order to achieve this objective, dynamic thermal simulation were carried out for four different types of external walls – commonly used in Egypt – in two different sets of cooling: natural ventilation and mechanical means. Experiments recommend that using the Egyptian Residential Energy Code (EREC) to achieve inner thermal comfort with the minimum energy consumption (consequently the minimum CO2 emissions) and the minimum running cost as well.