Mitigating Heat Gain Using Greenery of an Eco-House in Abu Dhabi

Abstract

Two fundamental design strategies should be taken into consideration when designing a residential building in desert climates, they are as follows: minimizing solar heat gain through shading and proper building envelope and maximizing passive cooling through natural ventilation. By introducing extensive vegetation yet carefully distributed, shading of building’s facades or roofs will directly mitigate heat gain through building envelope. An eco-house was designed in Abu Dhabi with special attention to greenery. In this study, landscape elements were intensively analyzed with the aim of reducing heat gain and improving overall building energy performance. Landscape elements such as green roofs, grass ground cover and greenery next to external walls were simulated in order to achieve optimum energy performance. The use of outdoor landscape (grass ground cover and shade trees) has made a 9% improvement of performance over the reference case regarding the electrical energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The energy use of the house dropped down by 16% for cooling and 18% for fan operation. With regards to the green roof scenario, a performance improvement of 19% over the base case has been achieved. The energy use of the house dropped down by 24% for cooling and 27% for fan operation.