Prefabricated buildings in Chile: energy diagnosis, 40 years after their construction. Case study: KPD buildings, Santiago de Chile

Abstract

KPD residential buildings, although simple and discrete, are emblematic of Chile. Their story in this country starts with an earthquake and is intertwined with the antagonistic governments of Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet. These buildings have remained outside current thermal regulations, and have become part of an extensive built housing stock that need to be diagnosed in terms of energy, to align them with domestic thermal requirements and, in this way, improve the quality of life of their inhabitants and contribute to what Chile has already committed to in terms of carbon neutrality. This article presents a thermal comfort evaluation case study of a KPD residential building complex in the Metropolitan Region. Concretely, four buildings are analyzed, each with the same materials and distribution, but with different orientations. The evaluation methodology considered a three-fold approach: regulatory, labeling and subjective and involved their inhabitants in the diagnosis, who had constantly and inexplicably been marginalized in previous analyses of their own homes. The results show discrepancies between the residents’ perception and the comfort range used by the current energy rating system in Chile.