From Summer cooling to sustainable Summer comfort in buiding thermal regulation

The introduction of the “Energy Performance Building Directive” (EPBD) [1] and consequently the new National Building Regulation [2] in the Member States (MS) lead to a totally new legal situation concerning, requirements and procedures on the building sector. Under the scope of an EU project called Keep Cool, a survey was undertaken in order to review the energy efficiency criteria, in the national building codes, concerning summer comfort or mechanical cooling system in order to elaborate recommendations towards a sustainable summer comfort. This paper presents the results of this survey [3] carried out under the participate countries (7 countries), and the main goals were the following to update the information regarding the new national building regulations to have a first insight regarding the requirements and summer calculations adopted in each country and to identify the positive and the negative aspects of the different regulations and selection of the best practice examples, in order to draw up recommendations for introducing sustainable summer comfort measures into future national building codes. A comparative analysis has started with some very precise answers and had permitted to carry out a comparative analysis between some national building codes. A review was undertaken concerning envelope constructive solutions (opaque and transparent), thermal mass, ventilation rates and the corresponding values limits