Designing and Optimization of a High Efficiency Single Family House Located in the TRNC

The conscious design of building parameters and the awareness of the available materials that could be used in construction could decrease or in some cases eliminate the need for HVAC systems, and thus, optimizing building parameters could help eliminating undesired energy losses through the building's envelope. This work highlights the benefits of some of the materials which are newly dragged to the North Cyprus market. Possibility of manufacturing and casting of lightweight Pumice concrete using ordinary concrete planet is discussed. Heat conductivity test, as well as the cooling time, of those new materials has been done and results have been tabulated. A case study is introduced for a house in N. Cyprus to find the impact of those construction materials. The house has been hypothetically constructed using ordinary materials which are considered as the norm in N. Cyprus in Case A. On the other hand, the house (hypothetical) in Case B is constructed with thermal comfort criteria in mind, and by using the new materials experimentally tested as a part of this work. Energy losses during the heating season and gains during the cooling seasons are calculated for both cases using heat transfer methods. The energy needed to compensate for the loss and gain are presented. The study shows that about 50% of the energy needed for the HVAC can be eliminated in Case B.