A new approach to increase energy efficiency of luxury high-rise residential buildings through an advanced facade component

Researches on reducing building originated yearly energy demand is one of the top issues in every country. Global warming threatens the life of all species and the Earth. One of the top reasons of global warming is greenhouse gases sourced by buildings. There are crucial developments in EU in order to provide energy efficiency in buildings. The most important improvement in EU is EPBD – Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and its enforcements. There are obligatory articles for Member States to provide performance improvement in new and existing buildings. Turkey as a member state candidate follows the developments in EU and therefore the enforcements of EPBD. Building energy performance has a high level of importance since Turkey is heavily foreign-dependent in terms of energy sources. So, improving building energy efficiency will provide reduction in required energy amount. Since, the developments in EU are followed in Turkey, EPBD 2010/31/EU became the lead document to direct Turkish building energy policy. According to EPBD 2010/31/EU, until 2020 overall greenhouse gas emmission will be at least 20% below 1990 levels, Union's energy consumption will be 20 % reduced and in this obligation the renewable energy use portion will be increased. This is a very clear enforcement. Turkey took this Directive as a base and National Energy Efficiency Action Plan was prepared. In accordance with this plan, the same obligation is valid until 2023. So, until 2023 energy consumption will be reduced 20% together with increasing renewable energy portion in Turkey. The Directive presents a methodology framework in order to provide this article. Basically, reference buildings should be defined, energy efficiency measures for reference buildings should be defined, final and primary energy need of reference buildings and measures should be assesed, costs of the energy efficiency measures should be calculated. Therefore, in order to adapt this methodology a national research project supported by TUBITAK was done in Turkey. This thesis study bases on the results of that national research. The research was took place in Istanbul climate because of the variation in building typology in Istanbul. To this aim, the density of the residential buildings within existing and new buildings was considered and the pilot building type was selected as residential buildings. Also, the Directive suggests to start from residential buildings. Three common residential types were designated through surveys by statistical data sourced by TUIK (Turkish Statistical Institute): single family houses, standard apartments, luxury high-rise residential buildings. Within this residential building types there is one different type distinguished from the common types that is called "residence" in Turkey. In this study, as a brief explanation, this type was named as "luxury high-rise residential buildings". This building type became popular in metropolises of Turkey in the last years. That is because of the rising land prices in the city center and the varied demands of the upper-middle and upper income group. The existing samples of this residential building type meets the building envelope thermal transmittance requirements in accordance with the related standards, also meets the HVAC requirements, however still have high energy demand. As a finding of the mentioned national research project, unlike the standard residential building types, standard retrofit measures does not have an important effect on energy performance improvement of luxury high-rise residential buildings.Therefore, instead of standard measures advanced retrofit measures are suggested for this building typology. Finally, it is obvious that advanced retrofits are more effective. In this thesis study, an advanced façade retrofit was developed and investigated to be used on luxury high-rise residential buildings. According to the investigations, there are lots of research projects proposing different methods to improve the energy performance of the buildings and so to reduce the greenhouse gas emmissions in different countries. However, there is not any research specifically focuses on advanced retrofits when the standard ones are not effective for luxury high-rise residential buildings. And also, there is not any other investigation with the façade component that is proposed within this study. The approach in this thesis study offers a different perspective on building envelope retrofits by thinking the building construction as a renewable energy system itself while reaching EU's 2020 target especially to increase renewable energy portion in building construction and 2023 targets of Turkish National Action Plan. Therefore, a new exterior wall component detail that increases the solar gain and ventilation rate through façade according to the climatic conditions were proposed and theoretical investigations were concluded on example buildings to reveal if the facade detail serves for the purpose. To this aim, three case study residential buildings was chosen. The first one is an existing building, the second one is a virtual building that suits with passive design parameters and the last one is the same building with the second one with more storey. Thus, the importance of the design conditions is also revealed. In addition, in studies about adopting the methodology of EPBD 2010/31/EU or reaching EU's 2020 target, the focus is mostly only on reducing the yearly energy demand, however thermal comfort of indoor environment is a very important aspect to designate the most proper suggestions for reaching the target. Especially, in these kinds of studies while proposing a new construction component as in this thesis study, it is very important to evaluate the energy performance of the proposed component together with its effect on thermal comfort. Therefore, after energy performance analyzes, thermal comfort analyzes were done by calculating uncomfortable hours. As a conclusion, it was shown that the proposed exterior wall component detail has big potential to reduce yearly primary energy demand of luxury high-rise residential buildings in comparison to the standard retrofit actions. Additionally, in the cases with the proposed component, uncomfortable hours are less than the base cases. Moreover, Turkey is one of the representative country of Mediterranean climatic countries with a wide variety in terms of climatic conditions. Therefore, researches in Turkey would effect the applications in other Mediterranean countries as reverse. And since this building type and its variations locates also in other Mediterranean countries, the research could be a reference for potential use of the countries with Mediterranean climate. Within the scope of the thesis; in the first part the purpose of the thesis study, the unique value, literature review and hypothesis, in the second part the progress in the field of building energy efficiency both in EU and Turkey, in the third part the approach to decrease yearly primary energy demand of luxury high-rise residential buildings and comprehensive explanation of the methodology, in the forth part application of the explained approach on three case study buildings, in the fifth part discussion of the study and in the sixth part conclusion of the study take place.