HO-18-C009 -- Assessing the Risk of Overheating in High-Performance Social Housing Buildings with the Use of Regression Analysis PDF

As households are getting more insulated and airtight to reduce energy consumption, overheating in free-running buildings is quickly becoming an issue during summer, especially considering climate changes. Unfortunately, recent history has shown that overheating can quickly lead to wide-scale fatalities. Thus, summer discomfort should be considered when designing buildings and new strategies to prevent overheating should be developed. In this paper, a regression analysis is applied to build household models from measured data that can be used to identify the most important weather, building and occupant parameters on the risk of overheating. This data comes from a monitored high-performance social housing building in Quebec City, Canada. According to ASHRAE's adaptive thermal comfort model, overheating was found to occur in spite of the relatively mild summer conditions. Results from the regression analysis suggest that occupants can reduce by 53% the intensity of overheating by reducing their electricity and DHW consumption, by preventing solar radiation from entering the built environment and by constantly using ventilation systems.