Natural ventilation strategies for indoor thermal comfort in Mediterranean apartments

Abstract

Natural ventilation strategies as effective low energy refurbishment solutions are identified within this research study, for an existing urban multi-storey apartment building in Athens, representative of over four-million Greek urban residential buildings. Retrofit strategies were evaluated using occupant comfort criteria and the existing ventilation strategy, for a single apartment using dynamic thermal simulations. These strategies included individual day and night ventilation, a wind-catcher and a dynamic facade. Suitable openings operation in response to environmental parameters provided sufficient day and night ventilation and occupant comfort. The inclusion of a wind-catcher yielded very little improvement to the ventilation performance. However, the combined operation of the wind-catcher and the dynamic facade delivered operative temperature reductions of up to 7 °C below the base-case strategy, and acceptable ventilation rates for up to 65% of the cooling period. The successful performance of the proposed strategies highlights their potential for reducing energy consumption and improving thermal comfort in a large number of buildings in hot climates.