Sustainable Building Material Technology as an Approach to Thermal Comfort in Low Income Housing in Hot Regions

Abstract

Due to increasing the demand for low income housing projects, the Egyptian Government has constructed a large number of identical residential units all over the country regardless the climatic condition of each location and the economic and environmental aspects in design and construction process. This has led to lack of thermal comfort in the indoor environment and increasing in energy consumption.  On the other hand, this problem can be solved by choosing the appropriate building material with respect to environmental design principles. It can greatly improve the thermal performance and reduce the negative impact of these projects on human and environment. The main aim of this research is to evaluate the thermal behavior of the current low income housing prototype (case study) and improve it using alternative sustainable building materials and techniques in order to reach human thermal comfort. It also provides an analytical study of global experiences on using friendly construction material in an environment friendly similar project. The performance of the case study evaluated using computer simulation program (design Builder). This research process led to a strategy of improving public housing projects in Egypt.