Position Paper Introducing a Sustainable, Universal Approach to Retrofitting Residential Buildings

Abstract

Protests during the 2021 Climate Conference in Glasgow exemplified our dilemma. The establishment perpetuates old thinking, while young people demand a new approach to mitigate the impact of climate change. The authors agree with the young people, and as a solution we propose to replace the current fragmentary approach with a new holistic one. The passive house approach that was conceptualized by the University of Illinois and built in Canada in 1977 showed us that energy consumption can be reduced about half of that used in the traditional design. Seventeen years later, a European passive house was built in Darmstadt. In 2008, a demonstration house in Syracuse, NY, showed that integrated passive measures produced energy use by about half of the NY state code for 2004. At the same time, some advanced houses in the USA showed total energy use of about 70 kWh/(m2∙y). In 2008, at the first Building Enclosure Science and Technology Conference, two equally important objectives for 2030 were proposed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: (1) a 90% reduction of energy use in new buildings and (2) 50% for the retrofitting of existing buildings, i.e., to the level achieved in the 1980s. The first objective has recently been achieved in small buildings while the large residential buildings remain on the level obtained in the 2000s. Yet, the retrofitting of existing buildings (the second objective) has been a dismal failure. This paper acknowledges progress in hydronic heating and cooling involving electric heat pumps and hybrid solar panels, building automatics used for operation of HVAC, and modification of air distribution systems that comes from experience with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Furthermore, it highlights that to accelerate energy efficiency and carbon emission reductions, there must be broad public-private educational programs with demonstrations of a new generation of retrofitting. Economically and ecologically retrofitted buildings will create a new approach to real estate investment.

The 4th Industrial Revolution Brings a Change in the Design Paradigm for New and Retrofitted Buildings

“…The building as a system was introduced 50 years ago, when the old system could not deliver energy-efficient buildings. The first step was to learn integration [48][49][50], and the second was to focus on control of the indoor environment [16,51,52], not forgetting about the buildability [53][54][55] and the analysis of passive houses [56,57] to arrive at a synthesis [58]. Finally, this integrated technology was demonstrated to function in Hungary [12], the USA [59], China [60], Poland [61], and Japan [62].…”

“…A bedroom likely to be used by sick people should be underpressurized to guard against the spread of illness. A direct outdoor air system (DOAS) should be used [58]. Therefore, the requirements for retrofitting must be broadened to include adequate handling of DOAS ventilation with interior air circulation.…”

A neural network for monitoring and characterization of buildings

“…We must be able to design a changing control system ensuring the appropriate quality of the internal environment. In doing so, one must first understand interaction of factors shaping the indoor environment [2][3][4][5][6] and select a suitable estimator for which acceptance criteria are already in existence, e.g., PMV (percentage mean vote).…”