Indoor Temperature Improvement and Energy-Saving Renovations in Rural Houses of China’s Cold Region—A Case Study of Shandong Province

Yanqiu Cui,Hongbin Cai,Simeng Li,Ninghan Sun

doi:10.3390/en13040870

Abstract

With the continuous implementation of a plan for reconstruction of “Beautiful Countryside” in China, the rural environment and appearance of rural houses have been significantly improved. However, those houses in cold areas of China have great trouble with indoor temperature and heating-related energy consumption. After investigating the current situation of the layout, building envelope, indoor temperature, and energy consumption of the rural houses renovated by the plan of “Beautiful Countryside” in Shandong Province, this paper puts forward the improvement measures of raising indoor temperature and reducing energy consumption. On this basis, a typical rural house was selected, and DesignBuilder was utilized to simulate the effects before and after the application of different renovation measures for this house. The results show that the main way to raise indoor temperature and reduce energy consumption is to improve the thermal insulation performance of the building envelope, including renovation of the roof, exterior walls, doors and windows, and attached sunspace. In addition, combined with the achievements of “Beautiful Countryside” reconstruction, this paper shall propose specific renovation practices which are suitable for different rural houses. Based on the level of economic development in rural areas, it also puts forward some feasible renovation paths for different rural areas, and further provides references for other areas to carry out relevant work in the future.

Highlights

More than 560 million people still live in China’s rural areas [1], and the total construction area of rural houses is about 24 billion m2 [2]
By 2030, it is estimated that about 0.5 billion people would live in China’s rural areas, and the construction area of rural houses would be about 22 billion m2, accounting for 29% of the total construction area in the whole country [3]
In order to guide farmers to choose the most appropriate transformation measures, it is necessary to simulate the effect for the transformation measures, including renovation of the roof, exterior walls, doors, and windows, and building the sunspace. According to this field research, a typical rural house was selected from the surveyed rural houses as the simulation object, and the temperature of the main room in winter and the heating energy consumption of the rural house were considered as the simulating indicators, and DesignBuilder, which is widely recognized computer simulation software, was applied for simulation [30,34,35,36]

Summary

Introduction

More than 560 million people still live in China’s rural areas [1], and the total construction area of rural houses is about 24 billion m2 [2]. By 2030, it is estimated that about 0.5 billion people would live in China’s rural areas, and the construction area of rural houses would be about 22 billion m2 , accounting for 29% of the total construction area in the whole country [3]. A large number of rural houses and unreasonable design and construction modes would lead to the large amount of energy consumption in rural residential buildings [4,5,6,7,8]. If there is no control, the energy consumption in rural residential buildings will

Methods

Results

Conclusion