The impact of compromised insulation on building energy performance

Abstract

Improving the performance of buildings is a key part of the global effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions and reduce energy consumption. Reducing the designed thermal transmittance of building envelopes through the addition of insulation is one of the primary measures adopted in many nations aiming to address the building sector. In theory, these globally adopted measures to improve design should result in considerable energy savings. The reality however is different. And a mismatch between design and in-use performance has been widely cited. This performance gap is extensively attributed to changes in occupant behaviour – the rebound effect. Considerably less research has investigated technical performance gap rationale. This paper aims to address this literature gap by investigating two technical reasons why design and in-use performance might differ; namely: i) moisture presence in the building’s insulation and ii) thermal bypass of the insulation system. The study uses a combination of thermal resistance analogies and computational fluid dynamics, to ascertain the extent to which compromised insulation would impact the performance of building envelopes. An increase in envelope heat loss results in an increase in a building’s energy consumption, and hence its associated greenhouse gas emissions. The study concluded that, in extreme cases, the presence of moisture in the insulation layers can increase the thermal transmittance of highly insulated envelopes by a factor of 2.2, while closed- and open-loop thermal bypass can increase it by a factor of 3.5 and 3.7 respectively. Although these might be considered extreme cases, the results align with findings from several past studies that quantified the gap between in-situ and design thermal transmittance. The results suggest that, while ensuring building envelopes are designed with adequate levels of insulation is important, ensuring that the insulation is adequately installed is potentially of equal importance.