Cost and energy efficient envelope systems for a single-family house in Timisoara, Romania

Abstract

Over the last decade, Romania has faced a rapid expansion in the residential sector. The need for housing has increased significantly next to the ever-developing urban areas. One of the main targets for our country is to reduce the total energy consumption stipulated by the Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD). The main purpose of the study is to determine a comparative solution of the building envelope for a single-family house with a given net area and interior volume suited for a family with two adults and two children. The study is applied on a masonry two story house with continuous concrete foundations and a flat roof. This kind of scenario fits the local seismic building codes and currently, is the most accessible solution on the market. According to the national energy efficiency building requirements two different envelope systems are considered: monolithic wall (autoclaved aerated blocks) and multi-layered wall (large ceramic blocks with additional insulation), both having the same U value required by the above-mentioned code. Because the monolithic wall solution should have a shorter execution period than a multi-layered component, we intent to compare cost-efficiency scenarios of the two systems given local building standards. In both cases, the masonry acts as the main structural component of the system with similar concrete components. Because, in Romania, the most used thermal envelope system is based on polystyrene (EPS), a material with high embodied energy, the paper studies alternative solutions for residential buildings, with lower impact on the surrounding environment.