Early design support for summer comfort evaluation of dwellings: a comparison of calculation methods

Abstract

This paper focuses on the determination of a suitable calculation method for summer comfort evaluations of single-family dwellings for architects’ use in early design phases, taking into account the limited availability of input data in these phases. In this context, the current study investigated whether the application of the EPB-model on the level of a room would be an appropriate approach for early summer comfort evaluations.In addition, a simple steady-state heat-balance based calculation method is examined, in which the hourly indoor temperature is calculated for each zone during one summer month. Both simplified methods are evaluated in a comparative analysis with a multi-zone dynamic simulation in TRNSYS of one reference dwelling. The results show that both simple approaches predict similar tendencies for summer comfort expectations.