Bioclimatic analysis of Meche’s House: a construction alternative

Abstract

Meche´s House is an alternative post-disaster construction, and this is the study of its bioclimatic approach showing that social and post-disaster buildings also need this kind of research. Tropical climate conditions lead to buildings having a high energy consumption for cooling loads. In Ecuador, the energy consumption of the residential area is 28.78% of final demand. Also, there is very little relevant information on the analysis of bioclimatic design in buildings, as well as specific analysis of interior comfort. The carried-out analysis process considered methods of bioclimatic evaluation, which mainly focuses on building the user’s comfort. For this reason, in the first place, the site climatic conditions and possible passive intervention strategies were determined. Followed by the evaluation of natural ventilation with which it was possible to evaluate the effectiveness of natural ventilation through simulations in Computational Fluid Dynamics program. Furthermore, thermal comfort analysis using an Energy Plus program is used for comparing the internal temperature ranges versus indoor natural ventilation. Finally, the data is discussed under an adaptive comfort and user perception of satisfaction. This research confirms the need to carry out bioclimatic evaluations of projects conceived under a good line of architectural design, since only in this way will it be possible to demonstrate that the proposed considerations and strategies have positive or negative outcomes.