The Thermal comfort for Excavated cliff buildings:Taba, Egypt as a case study

Abstract

The cliff buildings are building types characterized by location on cliffs and mountain slopes and terraces. The cliff buildings rang between three main types; the Exposed, the Semi excavated, and the totally excavated. The high cliff buildings are featured by altitude over the sea level, which give an advantage to these type of buildings. Egypt is characterized by hot arid desert climate with extended coastal, and in some places with high rock formations, like mountains and hills. The Sinai Peninsula is featured by mountain formation overlooking the Red Sea. The Tourism sector benefits from plain coastal in order to build their villages with negligence for the site formation and its advantages. The mountainous regions represent opportunities for investment and development, but it suffers from lack of attention and negligence. It is assumed as barren and semi-arid areas inhabited by the minority, mostly Bedouins and indigenous people. The objective of this paper is to test the cliff buildings alternatives ability to achieve thermal comfort inside spaces. Therefore, the simulation is fulfilled by using Design Builder program for a separate touristic guest room with total built up area 100 m. sq. in Taba, Egypt. The simulation measures air temperature inside spaces with varying in window to wall ratio and through the four main orientation directions. As to highlight on the importance of reconstructing buildings in Egyptian mountains, hills, and plateaus and the effect of these buildings on enhancing the environment by decreasing HVAC use and increasing thermal comfort. Whereas the totally excavated buildings with an exposed facade are within the comfort zone for the air temperature.