The assessment of apartment and school building measures to improve building performance in Finland

There are several tasks which are performed by buildings. These are usually referred to as building functions. The building performance is a characteristic of a structure that demonstrates how well the construction performs its functions. The efficiency of the construction method could also be affected. The building's efficiency relies on the building's reaction to external loads or shocks. The building performance measures can be described as energy consumption, CO2 emission, perceived indoor air quality, renovation cost, cost of improving indoor air quality, living quality, and ownership. Taking the above measures into account, the building performance is greatly influenced by measures such as energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and perceived indoor air quality. Thus, building performance can enhance significantly by boosting the three specified measures. The case studied which are discussed in this thesis are a residential building and a school located in Helsinki. The difference between the three indicated measures such as energy consumption, CO2 emission, and perceived indoor air quality is argued before and after renovation. The renovation process is limited only in changing the external wall composition of both case studies, which is one of the essential steps in the renovation. Both cases studies are modeled in IDA ICE software, and discussions are based on the outcome results of the respective software. Both building element characteristics of case studies are extracted from the typical original design values of buildings book in Finland 2018 called as Tyypillisiä olemassa olevien vanhojen rakennusten alkuperäisiä suunnitteluarvoja. The legal requirements and standards which have to be satisfied after the renovation process are based on the national building code of Finland. By improving the external wall insulation layer thickness from 75 mm to 170 mm in the apartment and 90 mm to 190 mm in the school, the energy consumption decreases by 10.96% in the apartment and 13.34% in the school. Moreover, due to the improvement of the external wall insulation layer, the external wall U-Value has been reduced for 61.71% and 63.49% respectively in the apartment and the school. However, there is no significant changes in the CO2 emission and perceived indoor air quality measures since the airflow influences the mentioned measures which is not studied in this research