| Summary: | Year after year, global warming is elevating temperatures all over the world, causing indoor
overheating environments that are inhabitable, and increasing energy demand in housing.
Given this global concern, the aim of the study was to evaluate the thermal behavior of the
house in the cities of Miami, Guayaquil and Tenerife, by a comparison assisted with a
simulation for their indoor overheating hours and cooling demand, considering their climates,
energy efficiency codes, and construction systems. These were: Miami, with two models (M1
with timber frame as the thermal envelope and M2 with a concrete block system), Guayaquil,
with two models (G1 with the limitations for a dwelling with cooling system and G2 without
it), and Tenerife with only one model.
As a result, was found that Miami is the case with the higher consumption, which has a higher
energy demand in a house of timber wall system than in a house of concrete block system, due
to the thermal inertia. Despite that both models have the same usage time for the cooling
system, meaning that more power was needed to reach the thermal comfort. Then, Guayaquil
and Tenerife, are the cases that follows, with less consumption.
While, according to the UNE EN 16798 methodology, in the indoor overheating hour
evaluation in a year, Miami has the higher cases with a 31.43% of its hours in overheating for
the timber frame system and a 22.88% for the concrete block system, followed by two cases in
Guayaquil, with 4.2%, other with none, and also Tenerife with 2.43%.
Nevertheless, the study showed that energy consumption is not necessarily related to the indoor
overheating hours that a house could have. Given that, in the case of Guayaquil, where it
doesn’t have any indoor overheating hour in all year, while Tenerife, with a similar energy
consumption, has 2.43% of its hours in overheating. Due to the different parameters that the
UNE follows in comparison with the cooling setpoints given by the CTE-DB-HE all over the
year for the respective cases, because of their long warm seasons. Therefore, the study analyses
the limits establish by the Spanish normative in relation to overheating, showing an
overestimation assessment if the results with the UNE methodology are compared.
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